Australia's high-salary hot spots and postcodes with smallest paychecks

Australia’s high-salary hot spots and the postcodes with the smallest paychecks have been revealed in a new research. It showed that Queensland’s Bowen and Gladstone regions with postcodes that start with 46 and 47 secured top spots with average wages ranging between $129,024 and $101,170 respectively.

This is according to the national wages survey analysed by jobs website adzuna.com.au. The second place went to ACT postcodes that start with 26, with the average salary at $103,752. Postcodes in South Australia that begin with a five had the highest number of postcodes sitting at the lower end of the pay scale.

Adzuna CEO Raife Watson has discussed the strong results seen at Bowen and Gladstone. He said he believed it was because of recent business activity in the areas, which include a number of new coal mining projects in the Bowen Basin, which had a flow-on effect to the ports in Gladstone.

Watson said they have not witnessed coal prices jump at this rate since 2011. He added that the Palaszczuk government issued new mining leases in the region in response. As a result, construction and mining must continue.

News.com.au also reported Watson as saying that the Gladstone Port will reap the benefits of the global demand for coal as well. Jobs in logistics will rise steadily as exports ramp up.

Huge cities, he said, still equalled higher pays. Adzuna’s map shows that capital cities in Australia offer the best opportunities for work at a higher rate of wage.

Such benefit also comes with the outcome that Australia’s capita cities are getting overpopulated. Watson said the quality of life is beginning to diminish. Also, competition for jobs was much higher in cities than in regional areas.

“If you focus on a career in healthcare, or in any of the STEM areas, there will be opportunities for you to move to regional areas of Australia and still have the opportunity to earn an above-average salary in a location without the traffic and exorbitant house prices,” he explained. Watson believed one-third of existing jobs would be replaced by automation before 2030. But there are jobs that are perceived to be future-proof such as those in IT and healthcare.

Another finding in the report was that jobs ads in the mining industry had rose 10 percent over the last six months. Meanwhile, jobs in logistics recorded more than doubled that figure at 22.84 percent.