THE BANK WEST CURTIN ECONOMIC CENTRE RECENTLY RELEASED THEIR REPORT ON WORKFORCE AND SKILLS: WESTERN AUSTRALIAN LABOUR MARKETS IN TRANSITION. THE REPORT INVESTIGATES EMPLOYMENT IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA AND FINISHES ON A HIGH NOTE SAYING THAT THEY DON’T SUBSCRIBE TO THE NEGATIVE VIEWS PUT FORWARD BY “SOME DOOMSAYERS WHO WARN OF A DAMAGING POST-BOOM CONTRACTION IN ECONOMIC ACTIVITY,” WITH THE CENTRE’S OWN FORECAST SHOWING MODERATE GROWTH.
The report is of interest to for urban development as we need to be able to understand employment trends in order to be able to plan effectively. In the ten years to 2014 Western Australia’s labour force grew by 33% to 1.44 million. That is an extra 360,000 people. Whilst many went into the mining industry, construction remains the biggest employer in this state.
In new areas employment is a government priority and it is interesting to see the evolution of the labour force. Some people express concerns about levels of unemployment in new areas based on east coast assumptions but many new areas sit below the Greater Perth average of 4.8% recorded in the last census. According to the census many new areas have a lower unemployment rate than the popular inner ring suburb of Mount Lawley (4.3%); the rate in Baldivis was 4.1%, Ellenbrook 4.2% and Byford 4.0%.
Obviously part of the reason for the lower unemployment rate is the need to meet mortgage repayments for new home buyers but family composition is also plays its part. In Baldivis for example, 85.4% of households are families with 28.7% of people under the age of 15 (ie, dependent children). In Mount Lawley, the number of family households falls to 58.7% with nearly double the number of rental households compared to Baldivis.
One of the most striking things about employment in new areas is the dominance of technical and trade workers. In almost all new areas that cohort dominates, for example, 22.6% of workers in Butler are in the technical or trades area, similar to Baldivis (21.4%) and Byford (22.9%).
This means many work locally, or are fly-in-fly out and are not seeking to get into the CBD on a daily basis.
Employment is a complicated economic and a practical issue with the challenge to mature the depth and diversity of local opportunities in new areas as quickly as possible. Many developers of large masterplanned communities have employment generation strategies to foster business and, based on the data, it is making a difference.