The Gazette (area) industry

Having looked at the number of workers in the Gazette area and how/where they go to to work this post looks at the outcome of their labours.  That means the nature of the goods and services delivered by their employers.

The ABS classification of industries has 19 entries at the top level.  Several of these have very low numbers of employees in the Gazette area and it is very difficult to fit, in a legible way, such a large group of entries in a blog-chart.  In addition the confidentiality algorithm of the ABS makes small numbers unreliable (as might the impact of non-response and imprecise reporting by punters).  So I have combined the groups in a hopefully logical way to give a set of 11 slightly broader groups. I have also adopted relatively brief names for the groups to present the charts in a sensible way.

I may do a later post looking at the major components of the more significant groups if that looks interesting

My first analysis is the number of persons classified to each industry group.  (Note that very few of these industries are located in the Gazette area - this post is about the classification of the people in the area.)

It is no surprise that the biggest number of people work in the Public Administration and Security industry.  Given the importance of the Construction industry to the economies of Queanbeyan and the ACT it is probably no surprise that this is the second biggest industry.

It is difficult to talk about the small industry groups since I have deliberately merged some groups for the reasons given above.  However it is noticeable that there are few people in the Accommodation industry and Primary Industries.   This led me to wonder about how the industrial profile of the Gazette area compared with the more urban component of QPRC (the State Suburbs of Greenleigh, Karabar, Jerrabomberra and three components of Queanbeyan).

It isn't surprising that the Gazette area has a higher proportion of people in Primary Industries (effectively, Agriculture) than Queanbeyan.  However it was surprising to find a higher proportion of people in the Construction industry in the Gazette area: certainly trade skills are very useful out here (wish I had some).  The proportion of people in most of the Service industries are very similar although Queanbeyan has more people in the Wholesale/Retail, Accommodation etc and Transport etc industries.   I was surprised that Queanbeyan had an even higher of people in Public Administration than the Gazette area.

My next forays were to cross classify the Industry Group information by various other attributes.  I began by looking at the number of women per 100 men in each industry.  (This is the inverse of the traditional sex ratio which looks at proportion of men: I thought that a big number of females was a more positive approach.)  I have sorted the results from highest to lowest in this chart.

The order of industry groups isn't a great surprise, although the extent to which the ratios for Health and Education exceed 100% is a little startling.  Again, the low ratio industries are not a great surprise.

To create an age profile I gave each 10 year age group a score equal to the middle of the age range and calculated the average age.  In doing this I was thinking about media stories about aging of farmers.

The most interesting item here is the relatively low age for the Accommodation and Food Services Industry.  This is probably explained by 80% of the people working in this industry being in the Food Services sub-group - the type of jobs that suit young people wanting part time work due to study commitments- and 80% of the employees working part time.  The notably 'old' Industry Group is Transport and Media.  Several of the people in this industry group are concealed by the confidentiality processes but cross-classifying by age shows no-one in the group younger than 30 and the modal age group 50-59.  This seems to be just coincidence - I can't think of a reason why this is so.

I followed a similar process to create an income profile by Industry Group

The two lowest income Industry Groups both have a high proportion of part-time jobs, while the highest income group has over 80% of people in full time work (and with most employees of older age groups would expect the to be earning more).

My final look at Industry is to classify Industry by 4 levels of Educational Qualification.  I will confess that the education system has many aspects I don't understand (eg interpretation of various descriptions of diplomas etc).  However I think the 4 groups I have developed below for highest level attained are reasonable coherent.

I suspect that the high proportion of people with Years 10-12 as their highest level in the Accommodation and Commerce industries is - yet again - an effect of many of the people in this group being young and still studying.  The possession of Diplomas etc fits well with Industries reliant on trade skills while degrees areimportant for the professional groups.