Australia’s Top Growing Industries Illustrate a Thriving Country
This is the first in a series of blog articles looking at the Australian job markets. A recent infographic published by the Australian Government shows a country that is increasing its core strengths of construction, education, professional, scientific and technical services; healthcare and hospitality. These top growing Australian industries show a trend towards consolidating Australia’s growth position and underlining the fact that job expansion has been stronger than forecast with the national unemployment rate at a five-year low at 5.4% with almost 300,000 full-time jobs and 58,000 part-time jobs created in the last year.
Image courtesy of the Australian Government Department of Jobs and Small Business
What the Figures Show
Reports on Australia’s top growing industries show that young people are benefiting from the strong labour market conditions — industries with large numbers of young workers include Retail Trade (around 386,000), Accommodation and Food Services (385,000) and Construction (175,000). Also reported is that Australia’s industry structure is changing — today, more than three in every four Australian workers are employed in a service industry, with much of the growth driven by Health Care and Social Assistance.
Graduates entering the job market are wise to examine the figures as there are statistics to show that the top three areas in each of the five industries are:
Health Care
- Registered Nurses
- Aged and Disabled Carers
- Child Carers
Professional
- Accountants
- Software and Applications Programmers
- Solicitors
Construction
- Carpenters and Joiners
- Electricians
- Plumbers
Education
- Primary School Teachers
- Secondary School Teachers
- Education Aides
Hospitality
- Waiters | Waitresses
- Kitchen Hands
- Bar Attendants and Baristas
What This Means for Those Entering the Job Market
Australia’s top growing industries show a trend toward the fact that technology and the automation of work has resulted in an increase in the share of people employed in jobs that involve non-routine tasks which are difficult to automate or require a human presence (such as aged and disabled carers, chefs, teachers, plumbers, and software programmers).
The important skills now emerging for non-routine jobs are critical thinking, creativity, problem solving, adaptability, and resilience. This means that the qualifications and skills the next generation of job seekers will be shaped by these economic drivers.
Higher skilled occupations
- In addition to post-school qualifications and technical skills, communication, teamwork and organisation skills will be valued.
Lower skilled occupations
- While post-school qualifications may not be necessary, workers who are reliable, motivated, hard-working, well-presented and have relevant experience will be valued.
General skills
- Transferable skills, adaptability, resilience, digital literacy, critical thinking, creativity, problem-solving and presentation skills will all be important.
Another heartening sign is that young people are benefiting from the improvement in labour market conditions, with youth employment increasing strongly, up by 43,800 (or 2.4%) over the year to 1,891,000 in January 2018. Encouragingly, the rise in employment was due to an increase in full-time employment (up by 44,400). Against the stronger background, the youth unemployment rate fell by 0.1 percentage points over the year to 12.3% in January 2018, although it remains more than double the rate recorded for all persons.
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