After months of continuous falls, executive demand experienced a welcome rise in May, when it increased by seven per cent from previous month, according to the EL Consult Executive Demand Index.

Grant Montgomery, managing director of EL Consult, said that executive demand has shown some improvement after many months of an overall downward trend.

"However, while this may seem like a reversal of the downturn that has occurred over the last six months it is unlikely to be sustained.

"If you go behind the headline numbers most of this month's turnaround has come from the government sector, which is not as responsive to prevailing economic conditions.

"Naturally with a new government in Canberra and the beginning of a new budget year for most state governments a lot of initiatives are on the table. Consequently the employment of managers to run those initiatives is required," Montgomery said.

Government demand increased strongly in the engineering, financial management, and marketing sectors. Demand in the business sector was patchier, with losses in three out of the five industry sectors.

"The overall economy is quite robust with the resources sector -- and now government -- spending propping up a quite substantial slowdown that is occurring in other sectors.

"It is unfortunate that in order to engineer a turn-around in inflationary trends the rest of Australia and particularly the business sectors of the more populous states must slow down just that much.

"This is uncharted territory for many economic theorists," Montgomery said.

Len Rust is publisher of