Over 2 million jobs now exist in the greater Melbourne area: analysis

jobs in Australia — A job advert for a local fast food outlet hangs on a wall in a shopping center located in central Sydney, Australia, in this March. Reuters/David Gray

An inner Melbourne jobs boom is being felt, with up to 124,000 occupations created in the past five years. The increasing number of jobs is the result of growth in financial, insurance and professional services.

Economists and planners SGS conducted an analysis of the 2016 Census employment figures. It shows that Aussie cities are booming and more than 2 million jobs now existed in the greater Melbourne area.

In Melbourne and Sydney's inner city areas, jobs growth is outpacing employment boom in the middle and outer suburbs of both cities. SGS partner Terry Rawnsley said that central Melbourne is increasing the pace at which knowledge-intensive jobs are relocating.

Since 2011, over 900,000 jobs emerged in the metropolitan regions of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth. Just 5400 jobs were created in the rest of the country.

Rawnsley said the numbers for Perth and Brisbane showed the upshot of the end of the mining boom. "Those [white collar] people who no longer work in mining in those towns have moved to do professional services work in Melbourne or Sydney," he said.

Jobs in Melbourne

In the decade to 2016, jobs in the wider Melbourne metropolitan area rose by a third, from 1.5 million to 2 million jobs. Employment in central Melbourne grew by 42 percent, which was equivalent to 124,000 jobs.

The city’s ageing population leads to an increase in the number of jobs in the industry. Melburnians are more likely than ever to work in healthcare.

Nearly a quarter of the 900,000 new jobs across Australia in the five years to 2016 were in healthcare and social-assistance related industries. The job boom was specifically high for residential care and nursing home jobs.

The childcare sector has also seen a huge increase in employment as a result of a baby boom that gathered pace in 2012. Those welcoming new babies were more likely double-income households, which leads to the need for more childcare jobs.

Population growth also generates jobs in Melbourne. Education and training were huge drivers of jobs growth.

In 2016, Melbourne rose by an average of 300 people per day. The greater demand from overseas students attending Australian universities also inspired job numbers to go up. Accommodation and food services, retail trade, construction and insurance services also create jobs.

An increasing number of CBD-bound workers also mean the central city jobs boom is exacerbating transport problems. It often leads to congested roads and crowded public transport at peak times.