Over the past five years health care and social assistance was the fastest growing industry, and remained the largest contributor to the number of jobs in the Australian economy according to new annual data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) today. Of the 13.6 million employed people in Australia, 12.6 per cent work in the health care and social assistance industry.
"The new data contains information for 2017-18 and provides the best source of information on the number of jobs over the past 8 years for 80 different industries," said Bruce Hockman, Chief Economist at the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
"It shows filled jobs in Australia grew by 3.3 per cent, or 442,700, in 2017-18."
"The largest contributor to this increase was health care and social assistance filled jobs, which rose by 4.7 per cent. 2017-18 was the eighth straight year of jobs growth in this industry."
At the same time, manufacturing filled jobs saw a 1.2 per cent increase. This was mostly due to an increase of 19,300 fabricated metal product manufacturing filled jobs, and 8,700 non-metallic mineral product manufacturing filled jobs.
These increases were offset by food product manufacturing filled jobs, which decreased by 5,900, and printing (including the reproduction of recorded media) filled jobs, which decreased by 7,900.
