Last week, CBA economist Harry Ottley reported on the quarterly labour market account from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), which showed that 60% of the nation’s job growth since the beginning of the pandemic has come from the non-market (government-aligned) sector. Over the past two years, the non-market sector accounted for 80% of jobs created.
The ABS released quarterly data on Thursday, breaking down jobs by broad industry classification.
As illustrated in the next chart, the Healthcare & Social Assistance industry led job growth, adding 138,900 (42.5%) of 326,500 jobs created in the year to May 2025.
Since the commencement of the pandemic in February 2020, the Healthcare & Social Assistance industry added 603,500 (35%) of 1,717,000 jobs created.
The following chart shows that the Healthcare & Social Assistance industry’s share of jobs has increased to 16%, up from 14% at the start of the pandemic and 10% twenty years ago.
Justin Fabo from Antipodean Macro created the following chart showing that aged and disability carers have driven the increase in Healthcare & Social Assistance industry jobs.
The bulk of these carer jobs obviously relate to the NDIS, which has seen an explosion in funding over recent years to nearly $50 billion.
The NDIS is the primary factor contributing to Australia’s artificially low unemployment rate of 4.1%. The government job printer has been running overtime.
