Our journey throughout generations is leading us to Gen Y, to the Millennials now — they are born between 1982 and 1999. They are the children of the Baby Boomers and grew up in the 90s and early 2000s; their parents sheltered them which led to the criticism that they are a mollycoddled generation. Millennials…
When Joseph and Mary were summoned to travel to Bethlehem to be counted for the Census 2000 years ago, they had to travel approximately 4 to 5 days and well over 1000 km in order to be counted. So in Australia, we should be feeling blessed, so to speak, that our friends at the ABS…
How has our retail behaviour changed by Covid and the lockdowns? In this article I’ll look back to the start of the pandemic when the first retail data came out in May 2020 to see what impact that the pandemic might have had from February to March and see how lockdowns actually change Australians’ behavior….
Recently the National Skills Commission published a really interesting data set talking about the five-year jobs forecast, this is a very big undertaking. And it helps us understand the future of our economy. So, what does a job forecast actually tell us? It tells us that over the next five years we will be adding…
With all the lockdowns happening in Australia, it is very hard to keep a positive, optimistic, future-focused perspective. Of course we need to remember that compared to all other areas of the globe we are managing pandemics extremely well. Oceania has 35 COVID deaths per 1 million residents. This compares to around 15,000 COVID deaths…
Recently we saw some fantastic looking employment figures published about the state of the Australian economy. We have a record-high 13.2 million people employed — that translates into a laughably low unemployment rate of 4.6%. Average wages for full-time employed Australians went up to record highs, the highest ever recorded numbers. This must all be…
Our inner cities, our central business districts are suffering during the pandemic, aren’t they? High vacancy rates, people working from home, no major events — you’ve heard all the arguments of why the CBD is suffering. So, should we just lock up the towers and let nature take over,? Think of Will Smith in ‘I…
15The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated! Mark Twain We need to talk about the death of Australian manufacturing. It’s a story that is often being told in the news. “Yet another factory closure! “Ford leaves the country! “No manufacturing jobs are left in Australia! “At the heyday of manufacturing in Australia in the…
Australia went in no time at all from worrying about high unemployment rates due to COVID, to facing a big skills shortage. Essentially, we got used to the UberEats model of filling jobs. If we were hungry for a new job, we just ordered it with UberEats. We put it on these skilled occupations list…
Australia won’t see high population growth at pre-COVID levels for years. This is a problem for many sectors. Our education system is underwritten by international students, our residential construction sector depends on a steady stream of new residents needing to be housed and all the highly skilled jobs that our economy created couldn’t possibly have…