Depends what type of jobs you are after.
IT - some contracts start Jan, so some opportunity.
Other industries - most are starting to slow down Nov-Dec.
In Jan/Feb - everything dead quiet. Retail - slow down after Xmas. Professionals - recovering from holiday.

In short, best time to look for jobs:
Retail - October (ramping up for Xmas)
Professional - May/June/July.

Does this apply in AU or pretty much elsewhere?

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-30426343

Not gewd news?

not very good news.. worrying to read about all this.

Even "worser" related news, 4 December 2014:
http://www.couriermail.com.au/questnews/so...j-1227143590854

One of the comments:
Rebecca 8 days ago

This is news? I graduated Law 5 years ago and still don't have a job. I even went back to get a Masters with a Distinction average to single myself out and it made absolutely no difference and to top it all off I went back to Uni because I was a foreign language teacher - a field where there is no need for teachers. Crystal is lucky to have a partner to help her through. I have been turned down for admin, legal, retail and education jobs. When she's 40, has spent 5 years on the dole, has a $96 000 HECS debt and has slept in her car for three weeks then she'll know how bad unemployment really can be.

No werk?

Centrelink lorh. If I don't get my contract renewed in 2016, that'll be what happens to me lol.

It is very scary, reading all of this. No job security, and then long unemployment queues. Maybe no point in buying house, having children etc. Have to move city to city, country to country to cari makan.

Poor thing...I introduce more friend to you during xmas pot luck

Australian unemployment rate has gone very high. Highest since 2002. So not easy looking for job here too.

Their only saving grace I.e. commodities is going to be their biggest curse today with the deflated commodity prices. Furthermore, it is so reliant on commodities export that you are going to see domino effect if one of the big commodity player go under. Remember commodities player are highly leveraged and once they go under, the banks will struggle, the subcontractors will struggle, the workers will struggle and it all goes down from there.

Good place to live no doubt but bad place for jobs and job security.

its time to say, the time of "security" like good old days are not going to be there for long.

if joe hockey cut cut centrelink how? and centrelink gone bust

Nah I always have a backup plan.

Generally I've only aimed to finish my 5 to 7 years in the resource industry here because, everyone knows that good times don't last forever.

I'll stay here till the LNG projects have finished and oil prices have recovered. Then back to Malaysia I go as an expat on an Aussie passport, paid angmoh wages to live in my own damned country.

Either that I could go back to driving a cab

sound like a plan.

But do you think oil price will recover in the near term now that US is ramping up its shale oil/gas production?
How long do you think the oversupply will last as China is no longer on super growth mode (and i think it won't ever be on that kind of growth rate again- ever).
Unless OPEC decides to drastically cut production, I do not think prices will go up at all.
And even if they decide to cut production for the short term, in the long term, would the individual members follow? I mean who wants to take a hit on their GDP as they reduce production of oil/gas
On the other hand, the USA might just triple ramp up production of shale oil/gas to make up for the shortfall from OPEC's cut in oil production, hence "killing" the OPEC members.

What are your thoughts on this?

US isn't ramping up. It's ramping down due to the high cost of break even extraction.

Most of the major producers are now setting up credit buffers to brave the shock for a good 2 to 3 years. Most of the gas projects will be fine as they're under contracts for supply anyway.

OPEC's plan is merely to price low enough for a long enough time to kill off high cost producers, even their reserves and credit buffers can't withstand more than 2 nears near their total cost of production.

Shale oil cannot just be ramped up, the very nature of its extraction means that it is a time consuming endevour, thus they generally aren't able to react fast enough to the slump in prices. That's the whole strategy behind killing them. Hit them hard with low prices in a short term blitz and let them die, then resume restricted production after their dead.

so it was all the plan this while

It's all just a game at the end of the day. The only trick is to choosing the winning horse.

In other news;
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-13/myef...worsens/5965120

I also believe that Abbott will start cutting Family Tax Benefits next and his new Medicare cuts will pass. Also there's that whole fuel price indexation that's still being planned.

And now the Sydney Hostage Crisis. Australian shares drop by 1% so far. lol.

Bad news. My friend redundant for quite sometimes in mining. Went back to Brunei.

The only way