An occupational view of the Australian labour force : Patterns of job growth and decline

Generally employment has been studied in terms of changes in the types of goods and services that the economy is purchasing. Far less attention has been given to the occupational aggregates that go into producing these goods and services. The few studies that did investigate this area found that the mix of labour inputs appear to have been changing over time in a systematic pattern. The increasing prevalence of white‐collar, information workers gave rise to the assertion that many societies had entered a post‐industrial “information” age. Deals first of all with some issues of measurement in the context of the Australian labour force, then looks at trends in various occupational groups using a non‐standard four‐sector classification of the labour force. Finally suggests an application in relation to the link between education and training and its ability to reduce structural unemployment.