The line chart below illustrates Australia’s employment rate in four different industries between 1985 and 2015.
Overall, it is evident that the Technology and healthcare industries had almost similar trends of increasing worker volume throughout the 30 years, whereas the retail industry saw both drops and increases.
At the beginning of 1985, the total worker rate for all industries stood at 10%, with retail having the highest number among them at 20%. In 1990, they all gradually rose by 2%, 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 over the whole period. On the other hand, other industries, namely healthcare, construction, and technology, roughly continued to steadily grow thereafter. 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.