The job booms (and busts) over the pandemic

When Penny Petridis started in the construction industry nearly 30 years ago, she was regularly the only woman at TAFE or on job sites. But that has been changing, particularly over the past three years.

“The last two, three years, there has been a massive shift,” she said.

Penny Petridis has worked in the construction industry for nearly 30 years.Credit:Janie Barrett

As of November, fewer than one in five (17 per cent) of construction industry workers were women. But detailed jobs data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows that the number of women working in the industry has risen 27 per cent since the start of the pandemic.

Petridis said government support for getting women into construction was helping, as was increasing awareness at a high school level that it could be a great career regardless of gender.

“It’s a good job if you’re someone who naturally needs to work with their hands, like me,” she said. “There are going to be tough days, but having the other women around, you’re not isolated.”

The pandemic saw a seismic shift in the way most Australians work, and also changed demands on a variety of industries.

The ABS data shows there have been booms in health, mining, construction and professional services between November 2019 and November 2022, while other industries like manufacturing have continued a long-run decline.

Construction did not experience the largest growth in jobs. The finance and insurance industry experienced a 21.6 per cent boom, adding nearly 100,000 jobs.

Economist Stephen Koukoulas said part of the reason for the growth could be due to the natural disasters which took place over the last three years, from major bushfires to devastating floods, which would have increased demand for insurance services.

The healthcare sector saw the largest number of new workers. An additional 289,300 staff took on work from November 2019 to November 2022, a 16 per cent increase. That rise – which includes an additional 85,400 hospital workers – hid a fall in the number of staff in the beleaguered residential care sector, which shed nearly 21,000 workers over the same period.

Despite the strength in the jobs market, not all industries experienced booms. The number of people working in agriculture, fishing and forestry fell by 8 per cent, and the number of information media and telecommunications workers fell by 9.4 per cent.

Real estate has just 1000 more workers than it did in the November prior to the pandemic. The number of real estate agents and rental and hiring workers peaked at 237,800 in February, and has been falling as the property market cools in part due to rising interest rates.

Koukoulas said the number of workers in the industry tracks with the housing cycle.

“When people are just not selling or buying, you don’t need many real estate agents,” he said.

The fall in manufacturing jobs was a continuation of the sector’s 10-year decline, Koukoulas said, while the fall in agriculture could be partially due to the lack of international workers, including backpackers, who have been unable to enter the country to pick fruit and vegetables.

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