Australia’s enormous appetite for gourmet food and drinks has led not only to an international reputation as a foodie destination, but changed the way we spend our money and the types of jobs that are available – some of which would not have existed 20 years ago.
From specialty coffee and craft beer to brunch and fine dining, Australians are spending more of their disposable incomes on dining and drinking out, driving a phenomenon some have termed the ‘hipster service economy’.
New data analysis by jobs site Indeed has found that our changing tastes have transformed sectors of the economy in recent years, leading to a “mini jobs boom” in certain service industries.
This has resulted in a steep rise in the number of job seekers looking for “hipster” hospitality work since 2015, Indeed said.
The number of job seekers hunting for “hipster” jobs in Australia increased by 38.5 per cent between 2015 and 2018, data showed.
Jobs were tagged as ‘hipster’ if they involved words such as ‘vintage’, ‘pop up’, ‘craft’, ‘vegan’, and ‘yoga’, plus any form of ‘beer’, ‘brew’, or ‘brewery’.
‘Organic’ also made the list when combined with words such as ‘farm’, ‘food’ and ‘gardening’, as did ‘coffee’ when combined with words such as ‘independent’, ‘specialty’ and ‘artisan’.
The research also confirmed Australia’s status as the world leader when it comes to coffee culture.
While Australia and the UK were near equal in the number of barista roles available, Australia streaked ahead when it came to the number of people searching for those roles.
The number of jobs for baristas in Australia has nearly doubled, rising by 45 per cent over the past four years, Indeed found.
Australia’s craft beer boom has also been a boon to bartenders, with the number of jobs rising by 289 per cent over the same period.
In 2018 alone, 52 new breweries opened, bringing Australia’s total number of craft ale producers to 585.
The rise in “hipster” service jobs reflects the nation’s changing tastes and priorities, Indeed economist Callam Pickering said.
“It says a lot about how society in general has changed, what consumer preferences are, and what we prioritise as a society,” Mr Pickering said.
While the sector accounts for a relatively small slice of the overall economy – about 2 per cent or 240,000 people – it serves to illustrate “how the economy and society can change over time”, Mr Pickering said.
“When we look at the demand for quality food and good coffee, that is underpinned by strong population growth,” he said.
“We’re a busy population, so we don’t always have the time or capacity to create a good meal”.
The data also pointed to a growing demand for health and lifestyle products and services, with searches for yoga jobs increasing by 180 per cent since 2015.
Service industries are expected to “dominate jobs growth” over the next two decades, Mr Pickering said.
Demographic factors, such as Australia’s ageing population, will contribute to a strong demand for health and aged care services, while the growing population will “underpin strong demand for education services,” he said.
It struck me as I sat there that it was wonderfully convenient to have a Thai massage joint just around the corner, especially given my local shops are not very large. I briefly surveyed the other shops and realised swiftly that what I was looking at was the lion’s share of the Australian services economy supply chain. Nearly all of it was directed not at the production of anything, nor the supply of anything, nor the inputs to some factory, but at servicing my person. Specifically, it was mostly targeted at various components of my body. There was an inordinately expensive organic grocer for my stomach. A retro barber for my head. A manicurist for my nails. A tatooist for my ink. A specialist wine purveyor for my tongue. A gift store for my birthday. A shop front personal trainer for my flab. An Asian tailor and presser for my clothes. Any number of cafes of course. And a real estate agent on every corner.
I realised that it was I that was the factory. My body, or more to the point, my mind, my intellectual property, was being supported my an extensive supply chain of services that plumped, fattened, thinned, preened, pressed, fluffed, trimmed and massaged me into the ongoing production of ideas.
There was one thing more that was obvious. These various services were not just the slapdash Aussies of yesteryear. There were no lackadaisical loafers working for the man and hanging for a smoko. Each of the services on display was a finely crafted specialist, an artisan in his and her craft, immensely serious with extraordinary attention to detail. The massage offered a limitless array of options right down to your chosen incense and its specific impact upon your chakras. The barber wore a perfect replica suit from the 1920s and sported enormous mustaches to match. The personal trainer rippled in the window. The grocer glowed with ruddy peasant health and one could almost smell the fresh loam on her fingers. The cafe’s were a rival for Tate Modern in their timberwork and ceramics, and one could literally choose a vintage decolletage in which to hang as if riding in a time machine.
The amount of effort and innovation going into finding a competitive edge for the privilege of servicing my sagging flesh was spectacular.
And that’s the thing. All of these local shops are a hive entrepreneurial beavering. But all of them are directed inwards in an endlessly dividing paradox of insignificance. None of them is tradable, as services mostly are not, so none has the chance to flower much beyond the local shops, let alone nationally or internationally. That poses a problem for the economy because if all you ever do is service one another in more elaborately infinitesimal detail then there is no actual wealth generation going on. There was no organic capital generation, no capital deepening nor breakthrough’s in efficiency. The capital that drives this machine by definition comes from outside of it in the form of a visitor, a new buyer of a local asset or someone that has borrowed to invest.
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In short, this bulging prolapsed anus economy is based upon population growth to supply illegally cheap labour, more warm bodies in the absence of income growth and debt for houses to create wealth. It is a near complete waste of everybody’s time and effort other than for a very few oligarchs that can milk the prolapsed anus from above.
There may be jobs but they all lead nowhere beyond the confines of your own date.
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal.
He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.
The number of jobs for baristas in Australia has nearly doubled, rising by 45 per cent over the past four years, Indeed found.
