LMIP data portal

2019 Employment Projections - for the five years to May 2024

It is clear that COVID-19 will have a substantial negative impact on labour market activity in Australia in the coming months. At this stage, however, there is considerable uncertainty around the economic implications of the virus and the magnitude of the changes to employment that will result.

The 2019 employment projections do not take account of any impact caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and are therefore no longer reflective of current labour market conditions. As such, they should be used, and interpreted, with extreme caution.

Employment is projected to increase in 16 of the 19 broad industries over the five years to May 2024. Health Care and Social Assistance is projected to make the largest contribution to employment growth (increasing by 252,600), followed by Professional, Scientific and Technical Services (172,400), Education and Training (129,300) and Construction (113,700). Together, these four industries are projected to provide over three-fifths (or 62.1 per cent) of total employment growth over the five years to May 2024.

Each year, the National Skills Commission produces employment projections by industry, occupation, skill level and region for the following five-year period. These employment projections are designed to provide a guide to the future direction of the labour market, however, like all such exercises, they are subject to an inherent degree of uncertainty.

The 2019 employment projections are based on the forecasted and projected total employment growth rates published in the 2019-20 Budget, the Labour Force Survey (LFS) data (June 2019) for total employment, and the quarterly detailed LFS data (May 2019) for industry employment data.

If you are having trouble accessing the Regional Projections - interactive tool (excel file located above), please open our Common Issues file (Word) (57.7KB) For more information about file types, please go to our File Types page.

Employment Outlook to May 2024

The Employment Outlook to May 2024 provides an overview of the employment outlook across industries, occupations, states and territories, and regions.

Methodology for 2019 Employment Projections

The employment projections are based on detailed data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics Labour Force Survey. The projections have been derived from best practice time series models that summarise the information that is in a time series and convert it into a forecast. The projections are made by combining forecasts from autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) and exponential smoothing with damped trend (ESWDT) models, with some adjustments made to take account of research undertaken by the National Skills Commission and known future industry developments. The projection for total employment growth is consistent with employment growth for the month of June 2019 and the Government’s forecasts and projections for total employment growth from 2019-20 onwards, as published in the 2019-20 Budget.

These projections are for total employment (ie, both full-time and part-time employment), according to the definition of ‘employed’ used by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) in the Labour Force Survey. For more information about the definition of employment, please go to the ABS website. Labour Force Survey data are collected by the ABS on a place of usual residence basis. The scope of the survey also excludes some groups of people (such as temporary overseas workers and permanent defence force personnel). For more information about the Labour Force Survey sample design, please go to the ABS website.