Mining in South Australia

The South Australian Government has often spoken about how the mining industry will be the saviour of the state as the manufacturing industry declines. There has been a lot of coverage about this in the local newspaper but many people are still confused - due mainly to the scarcity of facts.

There is a good paper which analyses the situation and has attempted to quantify the employment implications (2006 -> 2014) at the South Australian Centre for Economic Studies.

It's well worth a read - here are a couple of relevant quotes from the paper.

"For 2006, the Centre projects an average of 5,090 mining-related jobs in this State. It should be noted that this is only a small component of the overall State labour market – just under 1 per cent of total full-time employment in South Australia. Mining is not a labour-intensive industry."

"Direct employment resulting from the ‘mining boom’ is estimated by the Centre to average 4,000 persons over the period 2005 to 2014. This is not a large number in context of the overall State labour market, currently generating over half a million full-time jobs. The significance of this labour requirement is that the majority of these positions involve trade, professional, or para-professional skills that are already in short supply. Furthermore, this labour demand may have a significant positive impact on regional areas where unemployment has historically often been very high."