Service sector reigning on jobs

BARISTAS, beauticians and boot camp instructors are driving a jobs boom in the “gig economy”, as the service sector swamps manufacturing as the nation’s biggest employer.

New statistics from the 2016 Census reveal the number of community and personal service workers surged 19 per cent in five years to a record 1.16 million – more than the number of Australian labourers.

But demographer Mark McCrindle warned that young Australians are increasingly relying on freelance and casual work as well-paid permanent work disappears.

“The declines in manufacturing employment are unprecedented,” he said yesterday.

“You’ve got an increasing shift from full-time work to part-time or casual work, and that’s all creating a weaker employment market.

“Young people now are more susceptible to the gig economy because the service sector jobs are more fluid and there are more freelance roles.”

Childcare and aged care workers, chefs and sales assistants were the fastest-growing occupations between 2011 and 2016, the Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows.

Australia now has 27 per cent more fitness instructors than it had in 2011, and 25 per cent more beauty therapists.

And the nation’s bar and coffee culture has spawned 23 per cent more baristas and bar attendants.

Coffee ace Tahlia Serle has been working as a barista since she left school 10 years ago.

“I started out doing it to pay my way through uni but I wasn’t successful in getting a job in the area I studied in,” she said yesterday.

Ms Serle, 27, holds a Bachelor of Agriculture and Science.

The census data shows that jobs in the agriculture sector grew by just 7 per cent in five years.

Jobs in the construction industry grew by 10 per cent – but the end of the mining boom resulted in a paltry ½ per cent growth in mining jobs.