Engineering and pharmaceutical companies are bringing six-figure salary jobs to Australia, showing there is still good economic news.
Highly-skilled jobs are up for grabs from Western Australia to western Sydney.
While the mining sector is in recruitment mode, Sydney is the most upbeat market in Australia with a Westpac-Melbourne Institute consumer sentiment barometer showing optimism levels at the highest point in two years.
However for those seeking a high salary, the best-paying jobs are in remote regions of northwestern Australia.
Engineering and pharmaceutical companies are bringing six-figure salary jobs to Australia, showing there is still good economic news
Highly-skilled jobs are up for grabs from Western Australia to western Sydney, with Vitex Pharmaceuticals in recruitment mode (stock image)
Sydney’s west is also where unemployment is falling, with 54,600 jobs created in the region during the past year, Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show.
The unemployment rate there has also dropped by 0.7 percentage points in that time to 4.9 per cent, putting the jobless figure well below the national average of 5.4 per cent.
Western Sydney is also home to Vitex Pharmaceuticals, at Eastern Creek, which is aiming to employ 440 people by 2019, up from 40 when it opened its $100 million facility last year.
This complementary medicines company is advertising for a range of positions, from machine operators to recruitment co-ordinators.
In Australia’s big cities, construction activity is still going strong with the value of work that is still to be completed standing at $71 billion, CommSec economists said.
Vacancies for jobs offering salaries of more than $120,000 a year are at the highest level in four years (iron ore workers in Western Australia’s Pilbara region pictured)
Over Melbourne, there are a record 158 cranes over the skyline with apartment building at a record, the Rider, Levett & Bucknall Crane Index for the March quarter found.
In Western Australia’s remote Pilbara and Kimberley regions in the state’s north vacancies for jobs offering salaries of more than $120,000 a year are at the highest level in four years.
Demand for mining engineers is so strong the resources giants BHP and Rio Tinto are offering six-figure pay packages in greater numbers.
Engineering job vacancies have surged by 23.7 per cent during the past year with demand for scientists, including geologists, rising by 23.5 per cent.
Demand for mining engineers is so strong the resources giants BHP, Rio Tinto are offering six-figure pay packages in greater numbers
Prospective mining engineers must be prepared to work in Western Australia’s remote Pilbara and Kimberley regions, where the iron ore projects are located, or at be willing to work on a fly-in, fly-out basis.
CommSec economist Ryan Felsman said mining engineering jobs had jumped by more than a third during the past year as strong demand from China for coal and iron ore had helped the mining giants recover from a 2016 slump.
‘We’ve seen a significant rebound,’ he told Daily Mail Australia today.
‘Certainly commodity prices have lifted and that’s coincided with a pick-up, more broadly, in job ads.’
Job advertisements on the Seek website, for the Pilbara and Kimberley regions, have risen to the highest level in four years while engineering job vacancies are at a five-year high.
Engineering job vacancies have surged by 23.7 per cent during the past year with demand for scientists, including geologists, rising by 23.5 per cent
‘The number of opportunities in terms of jobs around the mining states have increased by an average of 93 per cent from their low in 2016,’ Mr Felsman said.
‘It’s off a low base of course but what we’re seeing is this increase in terms of demand for those jobs.
‘With increasing capital spending, they’ve been employing skilled-type workers, so people in geo-science, engineers.’
The federal Department of Jobs and Small Business today revealed the number of job advertisements for engineers had surged by 23.7 per cent in the year to May 2018.
Demand for science professionals and veterinarians had risen by 23.5 per cent during the same period as job ads for motor mechanics rose by 21.3 per cent.
The roll-out of the federal government’s National Disability Insurance Scheme and major road and rail projects in Sydney and Melbourne had also helped boost demand in the human resources and construction sectors, which saw job ad numbers increase by 17.1 per cent and 13 per cent.
Despite the stronger demand for mining engineers, Mr Felsman said Australia was unlikely to return to peak activity in the resources sector.
‘I wouldn’t call it a mining boom,’ he said.
‘We’re never going to go back to the cyclical highs we had around 2010, 2011, that was the peak as far as the mining boom’s concerned.’