The Australian five-year job forecast figures are out: what do they say about our future?

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 virtually a million jobs.

A quarter of those million jobs will be in healthcare — that's the biggest growth sector by far in Australia.

We are an aging society, we are a rich society, we are actually running the NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme), and all of that turbocharges the healthcare sector.

If we look at the types of jobs by skill levels that shows that half (53%) of all new jobs that we're adding next five years require a university-level education.

Highly skilled jobs are what make the most of that jobs growth, so we can't possibly fill all those jobs with the people that already live in Australia.

That's why we are running an immigrant country.

The demands for jobs can only be filled with workers, so we would actually forego economic growth, collective prosperity if we were not to use migration.

It's one of the arguments why migration will continue to be a big issue in Australia and will drive many people into the country as soon as borders are open again.

Here is the full list of high-in-demand jobs in November 2020 and November 2025.

If we look at the fastest-growing jobs we see highly-trained jobs left, right, and centre.

It is healthcare, professional services, high-tech industries, knowledge workers that are driving the growth over the next five years.

But if we also look at the total number of jobs added, we add not only the highly-skilled Level 1 jobs but also Skill Level 4 jobs which are low-skilled jobs.

These jobs are still making the second-largest growth sector, and the problem with those jobs is that if you rely for your family income on one of those Level 4 jobs, you will not be living a happy life in Australia.

They just don't pay enough.

So, collectively speaking, we will need to make sure to shift as many jobs as possible from Skill Level 4 and 5 (low-paid, low skilled jobs) into middle-skilled jobs.

The problem is that we can't create these at will, so ultimately we will need to have a very honest discussion about the raising the minimum wage in Australia.

Ideally, from a management perspective, you would just want to have people that fully rely on those incomes, because you don't care what people earn that are in education, that are training to become a lawyer, an engineer, but do these poorly paying jobs on the side.

Who cares what kind of jobs they do?

They do low-skilled work under miserable conditions, and it's not that important for the economy and individuals' lives because they just run through a short hard time in their life.

But that's not what we are seeing here.

We are seeing a constant shift - a hollowing out the Australian workforce into more high-income workers and more low-skilled workers, and the one way to ensure that these people receive a fair go in Australia is to raise the minimum wage.

About Simon Kuestenmacher Simon Kuestenmacher is one of Australia’s leading demographers, co-founder of The Demographics Group, a regular media commentator, a columnist for the Australian and one of the world’s Top 50 Influencers in Data Science.
www.SimonKuestenmacher.com