Band 6+: The bar chart shows the number of people employed in five types of work in one region of Australia in 2001 and 2008. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features and making relevant comparisons.

The bar chart gives a breakdown of employment in five areas of work in one Australian region in 2001 and 2008.

Overall, it is apparent that sales sector was the overwhelmingly dominant category, outstripping all other categories by a significant margin in both 2001 and 2008. However, the ranking of the five categories remained unchanged over the period.

Looking first at data on employment in sales, figures in 2001 were nearly twice that of computing in the same year, with 180,000 and 100,000 employees respectively. Seven years later, in 2008 the tendency remained relatively stable, outstripping aforementioned data by approximately 10,000 in both categories. Furthermore, the number of people working in accounting in 2001 was nearly half that of sales in the same year and considerably more than one in two of it in 2008.

Turning to the two least significant categories, the number of employers in nursing was marginally a fifth of that of sales in 2001, reaching just above 40,000. Nevertheless, in 2008, the figure for people working in nursing still was more than two-fold higher than for farming, with just above 40,000 and exactly 20,000 respectively.