Public Sector jobs growth growing in importance

Posted on October 2, 2019 by Pete Faulkner - Jobs, Uncategorized

The quarterly ABS quartely detailed Labour Force data provides us with information on employment across both Public and Private sectors in the various industry classifications. Unfortunately this is only provided for the past 5 years, and only in the form of original, unadjusted, data. We have used this data, together with the ABS Trend employment series for calibration, to construct the Conus Sector Employment Trend series. Doing so allows us an insight into how public versus private sectors have been performing over the past 5 years.

Over the past 5 years Trend employment has grown by 1,372,470. Of those extra employed 884,170 (or 64%) have been in the Private sector. However if we consider the past 2 years, when Trend employment is up by 617,660 then we see that the Private sector contributed just 349,540 (or 57%) of those. Even more markedly, in the past 12 months Trend employment is up by 313,560 but the Private sector has added just 128,190 (or 41%) of them. The Public sector, despite accounting for only 15% of total employment, has been responsible for 59% of all Trend employment increases in the past year.

In the past year Public sector employment in Education and Training has been the biggest contributor to that sector with Trend employment up 59,570 with Public Admin & Safety (up 51,540) closely behind. Healthcare added 39,370. In the Private sector the largest increases came from Professional Services (up 87,030) and Administrative & Support Services (up 49,090). Full details of the Conus Sector Employment Trend data series is available on request.