No one million jobs for you!

The Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations and Soup Nazis (DEEWRSN) has today defied the pestering of Tony Abbott’s minions in the release of its five year employment projections, which fell short of the Prime Minister’s catchy 1 million number at a lousy 838,100:

• The Department of Employment projects employment to grow by 838,100 (or 7.2 per cent) over the five years to November 2018. Employment is projected to grow in 16 of the 19 broad industries over the five years to November 2018, with declines in employment projected for Manufacturing, Mining and Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing.
• Health Care and Social Assistance is projected to make the largest contribution to employment growth (increasing by 229,400), followed by Education and Training (118,800), Retail Trade (98,200), Professional, Scientific and Technical Services (88,700) and Construction (83,500). Together, these five industries are projected to provide more than two thirds of the employment growth to November 2018.

So, we are going to get older, more well-appointed and better educated, principally. Here is the full list:

It’s the march of the service economy with no food boom and manufacturing continuing towards extinction, of course:

And a delusional mining jobs forecast given the capex cliff:

Wipe off another 100k right there. As Leith noted recently:

For starters, the promised one million jobs – or roughly 16,670 jobs per month – would be below the 17,200 jobs per month created in the decade to February 2014, which also included the fallout from the Global Financial Crisis.

It must also be remembered that this level of jobs creation would also be off a much bigger base than was experienced previously. To illustrate, the 2,066,300 jobs created since February 2004 was on a starting jobs base of 9,464,500, representing jobs growth of 21.8%. If the Abbott Government achieved its one million jobs target from September 2013, it would represent jobs growth of only 8.7% on a starting base of 11,469,500 jobs.

Finally, Australia’s population is currently growing very strongly, which (other things equal) means that employment must grow more quickly in order to absorb the additional workers.

With the mining capex cliff approaching, along with the shuttering of Australia’s automotive assembly industry by 2017, the government’s low ambitions are wise.

Full report here.