Jobs held by women increased by 9700 in Tasmania between March 2014 and February this year, Australian Bureau of Statistics trend terms figures showed.

Jobs held by men increased by just 1400 in the same period.

“I am pretty sure a large part of the reason for the growth in female employment - in Tasmania as elsewhere - is because much of the growth in jobs is coming from female-intensive sectors such as healthcare and, within that, the NDIS ramp-up ...” Mr Eslake said.

“ ... more traditionally male occupations such as manufacturing and mining are losing or not creating jobs

“I’m not sure of this, but it may well be that women are getting the bulk of the jobs being created in tourism, many, if not a majority of which, would be part-time.”

Part-time work also grew strongly during the period.

Only 1100 of the 11,100 jobs the state added were full-time.

The trend towards employed females was even stronger in the year to February.

State Treasury’s analysis of the figures showed total male employment decreased by 800 during the year, while females gained 6500 jobs.

Part-time work was dominated by women (64,900 jobs compared to 28,400 for males).

However, more men than women gained part-time jobs during the year (2400 compared to 1800).

In February, the state had 98,000 males employed full-time.

That was 3100 less than in February 2017.

Full-time jobs held by women increased by 4700 during the year, to reach 55,000.

The state’s jobs total was steady at a record 246,400 in February.

While job numbers have increased, average working hours per worker have fallen.

Total weekly average hours for all workers fell from 30.9 in the year to January 2017 to 30.4 in the year to January 2018.

That was because average hours for part-timers fell from 16.8 to 16.5.

Full-timers’ average hours increased from 38.6 to 38.7.

Australian jobs increased by 17,500 in February to a record 12,480,500, seasonally adjusted.