The line graph illustrates the proportion of Australian workers employed in five different sectors, over the period from 1962 to 2012.
Overall, it is clear that the percentage of Australian people working in services exhibited an upward trend over the years shown, whereas a reverse pattern could be seen in the figures for manufacturing and agriculture, leaving aside the period of stability in the data on the remaining categories. Notably, the service sector remained the most common throughout the surveyed period, while mining was selected the least by workers.
In 1962, services attracted more than half of the labour force, thereby becoming the predominant category. Manufacturing occupied the second position at roughly 30%, about 20 percentage points lower than the data on services. This was followed distantly by construction and agriculture, both at around 10%. By contrast, there were only about 2% of employees working in the mining industry.
In the subsequent years, the service sector boasted an exceptional surge of nearly 30 percentage points to just under 80% by 2012, thereby far surpassing all other categories combined. In contrast, manufacturing recorded a significant drop, halving to only about one-tenth by the final year. A comparable pattern was observed in the figure for agriculture, though at a more gradual extent, falling to a mere 5% by the final year. Meanwhile, both construction and mining remained unchanged, with the former levelled off at precisely 10%, and the latter hovering around 2 and 3% with minor fluctuations through the timeframe.