It’s going to rain jobs, according to Fairfax’s Eryk Bagshaw:
Future farmers, nurses and teachers are in for a jobs bonanza in the next six years as millions of baby-boomers retire to make way for a new generation of workers in rapidly expanding industries…
Free trade agreements, an ageing population and an influx hundreds of thousands of new young migrants are expected to provide for extraordinary opportunities…
Researchers from Monash and Victoria universities used modelling developed over three decades to forecast labor force growth will be stronger than it is at present.
An extra 1.9 million people will be employed by 2024 at an average growth of 1.8 per cent per year, compared to 1.4 per cent between 2011-2016.
But the growth in the standard of living – gross domestic product per capita – is expected to halve, from 1.8 per cent this year to 0.8 per cent by 2021, due to stagnant wage growth and an ageing workforce…
The unemployment rate, which is likely to remain steady at around 5.5 per cent when the Australian Bureau of Statistics releases its figures on Thursday, is expected to hover around the same mark until the middle of the next decade…
Bonanza, what bonanza? With Australia’s population growing by 1.6% per annum, Australia needs to generate a helluva lot of jobs just to keep the unemployment rate constant, as well as lift wages.
What these forecasts are basically saying is that, yes, jobs growth will remain strong, but unemployment will remain at current elevated levels, GDP per capita will slow (as it has done over the past decade), and wages growth will remain anaemic.
If these represent a “jobs bonanza”, then I have a bridge to sell you.
