Demographic characteristics of JobSeeker hotspots

Nenad - demographic consultant

Nenad’s background is in geosciences and geographic information systems. At .id, Nenad has experience as both as a demographer and population forecaster. His areas of expertise are place-based analysis, identifying spatial patterns in demographic trends, community profiling, catchment analysis and an understanding of role and function of different communities.

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6 Responses

  1. Jaime says:

    Thank you very much Nenad for sharing the information and plotting it in such a descriptive manner.

    I think there may be an error in the table (Top 20 SA2s with largest JobSeeker increases) or, alternatively, I don’t fully understand it. Columns 6 and 7 appear to have the same heading but different %, I suspect the first one is March 2020 and the second May 2020 in keeping with the rest of the table.

    Keep up the good work.

  2. Rhonelle South says:

    Hi Nenad,
    I found this information very interesting. I live in regional NSW and while our shire has many of the indicators you link to impacted SA2’s, we also have 17% of our workforce employed in the health and social assistance sector. I would be interested to see how areas with high health employment faired, this information may be beneficial for the current review of aged care and for future career and training budget spend from governments.

    • Hi Rhonelle,

      That’s a very good point. Most places with employment in health and social assistance have come out well in the short term. If you have a look at our Covid-19 economic impact page for Eurobodalla, “Health Care and Social Assistance” is the only industry sector which is estimated to have a positive change in terms of number of employed residents (http://economy.id.com.au/eurobodalla/covid19).

      Regarding JobSeeker, I had a look at the SA2 numbers for Moruya and Tuross Head, two areas with high % of residents employed in health/social assistance and there was a 58% increase in JobSeeker recipients between March and May, possibly those residents employed in retail or construction, so perhaps if there weren’t many residents employed in health/social assistance in those areas, the numbers would be even higher.

  3. Rhonelle South says:

    Hi Nenad,
    Thanks for your response. The data clearly demonstrates the economic benefits from health sector employment to our shire. I would predict a return to more normal stats in the information media and telecommunications category as people move back to work places and school. The spike could relate to education and employment going online during isolation. Where health sector employment is predicted to continue to grow, ICT spike is likely a short term response to the changed COVID environment. What do you think? Is this a trend you have seen more broadly?

    • All good points Rhonelle. I think when we have another 3-4 months of JobSeeker data, we will be able to better understand which industries have had a V-shaped bounce back, which ones are U-shaped and slowly returning to normal and which ones have not experienced a return to normal yet or are still declining. Any further hiccups to recovery, possible further lockdowns and so on also might not help. I guess for not, we are just observing and trying to understand the complex relationships in different regions.

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