Aged and disability support and aged care nursing jobs are among the top roles contributing to the growth in community services and healthcare sector ads, according to a recent report.
The latest data from SEEK Group’s employment report shows a significant year on year growth in the community services and development sector (49 per cent), the second largest industry to experience job ad growth in Australia since April 2017.
Within community services and development, aged and disability support job advertisements were found to be the largest contributor (33 per cent), followed by employment services (27 per cent) and child welfare (16 per cent).
The top roles within the healthcare sector with increased ads include aged care nursing, physiotherapy, occupational therapy and rehabilitation.
The report found that the number of healthcare jobs advertised on the employment marketplace SEEK has significantly increased in a year (19 per cent), reporting more than 2,000 new ads in April 2018 compared to the same time last year.
SEEK ANZ’s managing director Kendra Banks said the continued growth of job ads in the health and community sectors was likely due to the ageing population.
“The strong growth in community services is driven mainly by aged and disability support workers, who are in high demand across Australia,” Ms Banks said.
Accounting for 14 per cent of Australia’s entire workforce, healthcare is the country’s largest and fastest growing industry and is projected to increase a further 16 per cent over the next five years, according to the Australian Jobs 2018 report from the Department of Jobs and Small Businesses.
“There is a real variety of roles within both healthcare and community services that are experiencing significant growth thanks to our ageing population, as well as the rise of chronic diseases which require on-going healthcare management and support,” Ms Banks said.
There’s also been an increase in the proportion of healthcare jobs being advertised in regional areas (32 per cent) compared to seven years ago (25 per cent) with Victoria reporting the largest growth (79 per cent) followed by South Australia (36 per cent), New South Wales (22 per cent) and Queensland (14 per cent).
However, there has been a decrease in healthcare jobs in regional areas in Tasmania (down 10 per cent) and the Northern Territory (down 20 per cent).
There has also been 62 per cent increase in community service and healthcare sector job ads over the five-year since the trial phase of the National Disability Insurance Scheme in 2013, the report said.
“The country-wide roll out of the National Disability Insurance Scheme has had a positive impact on job ad growth over the past two years,” Ms Banks said.
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All I can see is increasing ads for direct care staff, occasional case manager or scheduler or similar but nothing really creative and exciting. Certainly research roles are absent. Some case manager roles deem the person to have professional links to AASW or AHPRA or similar so one should read this as being a more clinical rather than non-clinical role. With such a demand for direct workers, clearly if I fall out of work, I should at least expect to get work in a direct care role!!