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UNEMPLOYMENT is placed to drop more with the amount of job openings climbing to record amounts, fuelling speculation of another interest rate rise.

National job opportunities in the three months to August rose 2.9 percent, seasonally modified, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Work opportunities rose by 11.9 per cent in the year to August.

CommSec shares economist Martin Arnold said with job vacancies now at a record high, the unemployment rate was set to fall below 4 per cent - from its current 4.3 per cent - as bosses were encouraged by business conditions to seek more staff.

"The Australian economy is recording stable growth and business problems are nearly just like they get," he said.

The potency of the economy led a frustrated John Howard to state the general public was failing to supply the government credit for economic management.

"I think there's a view in the community... Probably an important number that, for somehow or still another, our economic power and our economic stability and growth is happening naturally, that the economy is on autopilot," the Prime Minister told a forum at Ocean Grove on the Victorian coast yesterday.

He explained this was one of the explanations why the government was performing so poorly in the general public opinion polls: "I think people are starting to take the Australian economy for granted."

Seasonally-adjusted work openings totalled 172,700 in the three months to August.

Mr Arnold said there were under three unemployed people for each work, the lowest level on record.

Business companies has been among the strongest growth areas, with 45,200 vacancies, 28.4 per cent higher than a year before.

The number of jobs vacant in the communications industry has a lot more than doubled to 2800 in the exact same time.

There clearly was strong demand for labour in the development, retail trade and transportation companies.

Parts that seem to be less desperate for staff include welcome, entertainment and personal services.

The general public sector is continuing to expand, with the amount of vacant jobs 11.8 percent greater than a year ago.

In the season to August, job vacancies in the growth state of Western Australia were up by 31.8 per cent, unadjusted, adopted by the ACT, that was up 31 per cent.

Just Queensland had a fall, with year-on-year vacancies down 3.3 percent.

Matthew Johnson, the senior economist at agent ICAP, said the rise in jobs vacancies must provide employment growth in excess of 2 per cent.

"This suggests that unemployment will probably drop lower, and that everybody from the Reserve Bank down will continue steadily to worry about wage-push inflation," he said.

Low unemployment and large job vacancies is just a old-fashioned formula for inflation, with a limit to how many jobs can be filled.

There's, up to now, been number evidence of wage inflation, with the average price of work increasing broadly in line with prices in the economy. The following inflation figures are published on October 24.

UBS primary economist Scott Haslem said the growth in job vacancies would subscribe to higher inflation in the last months of 2007. He predicted the Reserve Bank would increase rates of interest in February 2008 to prevent inflation planning above the RBA's 3 % target range.

Nevertheless Mr Arnold said the increase in labour supply, via skilled migration, would not produce salaries pressures. advertiser