The line chart below illustrates Australia’s employment rate in four different industries over 30 years.
Overall, it is evident that the Technology and healthcare industries had almost similar trends of increasing over 30 years, whereas the retail industry saw both drops and increases.
At the beginning of 1985, the total worker rate for all industries stood between about 8% to 12%, with retail having the highest number among them. In the following year, they all gradually rose by almost within a range of 2-3%, except for healthcare which jumped by around 15%. However, they all converged to a range of 30-40% in the year 2000.
From 2001 to 2015, the retail industry experienced a significant drop throughout the period. Starting in 2000, the figure fell rapidly by 3%. From there on, the figure gradually decreased by about 5% per interval, resulting in a final number of 5 percent in 2015, which was the minimum employment rate at that time. On the other hand, other industries, namely healthcare, construction, and technology, roughly continued to steadily grow over the remaining 15 years.
Although healthcare and construction had slowly climbed by around 4-8% each year, resulting in a total of 60% for healthcare, which was the highest employment rate by 2015.