The state’s northern half now has more health workers than the South, while construction workers have flocked to Hobart.
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Strongly changing patterns in regional employment shown in federal Department of Employment figures included:
- The healthcare and social assistance workforce in the combined North-West, North and West Coast increased by 2200 to 17,700 in the five years to May, making it clearly the “northern half’s” biggest employer;
- Hobart and the wider South gained just 200 healthcare and social assistance jobs in that period, taking its total to 16,600.
- public administration and safety, which would include many general public service-type jobs, increased rapidly in the northern half, adding 1900 positions to total 6000;
- it decreased by 2200 positions to 11,600 in the southern half, which would largely reflect public sector cutbacks under Labor and the Liberals;
- the northern half shed a net 800 construction jobs, taking its total construction workforce down to to 10,500;
- the southern half, aided by a building boom in Hobart, added 2000 construction jobs, taking its total to 11,300;
- retail remained the second biggest employer in both halves, behind healthcare and social assistance;
- retail shed 500 jobs in the five years in the northern half and gained just 100 in the southern half, despite a recent string of all-time monthly statewide turnover records;
- agriculture, forestry and fishing combined declined statewide, but the results were very mixed between the two halves;
- jobs in those industries decreased by 1800 in the northern half, but increased by 1500 in the southern half;
- that left agriculture, forestry and fishing combined as the seventh biggest employer in the northern half and the ninth biggest in the southern half; and
- manufacturing was the fourth biggest employer in the northern half and eighth in the southern half.
Job numbers were quite evenly split between the two halves.
Of residents aged 15 and over, the northern half had 74,100 employed full-time, 43,800 employed part-time, 8200 formally unemployed and 86,800 not in the labour force (not working or formally looking for work).
The southern half had 78,300 full-time workers, 43,100 part-timers, 7700 unemployed and 84,300 not in the labor force.
The figures are based on averaging four quarters of Australian Bureau of Statistics data.
