Structural Shift in the Australian Economy and The Future of Recruitment

Yesterday I listened to a 24 year old (who runs three job boards) detailing his plans to launch a new job board focusing on the hospitality sector. His reason – it’s huge.

How big is the services sector?

A new paper released by the RBA illustrates the structural shift happening in the Australian economy over a period of ten decades. Services sector is huge. Its share of the nation’s employment pie has ballooned to 85% (and 78% of the nation’s output). To keep things in perspective, the mining sector, for all the noise it makes, accounts for a minute 1% of the total employment pie. It’s clear that in the future the majority of recruitment activity will take place in the services sector.

Within the services sector ‘business services’ (recruitment sector fall under this category) and social services registered the strongest growth.

Economic activity, and with it population growth, also shifted to the resource rich states of QLD and WA. Employment in both states grew when it either declined or remained stable in the rest of the country. For the long-term, opening an office up north or west, makes more sense than trying to expand in the southern states.

Here’s more data on the services sector.