Which Australian industry is leading in job growth ? Agedcare, Homecare.
No it is not the IT, finance, Real Estate or property development industries that are creating the most employment in Australia….
In fact, It is the Health Care and Social Assistance industry. It has been the primary provider of new jobs in the Australian labour market for the past 20 years and is expected to remain in that role for the foreseeable future.
You can see on this chart from the Reserve Bank of Australia illustrating clearly that over the past ten years Healthcare jobs have outpaced employment creation relative to all other major industries in Australia.
Health Care and Social Assistance industry includes professions such as doctors, nurses, dentists, physiotherapists etc but what you may not have known is that it also includes people employed in the aged care sector.
There are 1.5 million Australians currently employed in the healthcare & social assistance Industry and it is also well and truly the largest employer in Australia…and in the distant second position is the retail industry with 1.2 million people employed.
Jobs in the Aged Care Sector have grown significantly over the past ten years. Specifically, Homecare, which is the sub-sector of Aged Care, the total number of people employed in the Homecare sector has grown by almost 50% over the past ten years.
This growth is unlikely to slow as the underlying demand drivers continue to fuel employment growth. At the top of these demand drivers is 1) rapidly ageing population leading to greater demand for healthcare, 2) rising wealth leading to greater consumer expenditure on health & wellbeing, 3) advancing medical science leading to more products, more treatments and services hitting the market.
Australian government’s labour market forecasts for the next five years has placed the healthcare and social assistance industry to remain in the top spot for employment growth in Australia. At Primunity Homecare, we believe, the growth of the healthcare industry will remain for decades to come opening up great career opportunities for young people to enter the Healthcare & social service industry and train and retrain across a number of professions within the industry right along the length of their professional lives.
The panorama of Homecare sector’s landscape over the medium to long term is very exciting… for example the sector is embarking on a journey of rapid change & innovation fuelled by 1) greater competition amongst service providers, 2) the rising tide of elderly from baby boomer generation who will be discerning consumers, and 3) opportunities for disruption and innovation are emerging on the horizon with a steep curve from the use of Big Data, genomics, Tele healthcare, convergence of self diagnostic tools on smart phones etc…
Boring will not be the word for the sector in the future!