The table shows the percentage of labourforce working in various sectors in Australia in 2 years, 1989 and 2009.
Overall, in 1989, the proportion of working adults serving in the manufacturing sector was the highest, while 20 years later, health care ranked first in terms of employment rate. In contrast, tourism used the lowest number of employees in both years. In addition, manufacturing and retail witnessed a decrease in the share of employment, while the opposite was true for the other industries.
Looking first at the larger industries, in 1989, manufacturing took the first position, at 15%, followed by retail and healthcare with 11.8% and 9.6%, in that order. In 2009, the share of manufacturing reduced by a third to 9.8% and became the third-largest sector. There was also a slight decrease to 10.1% in the figures for retail, while healthcare used much more employees, accounting for the largest proportion of the workforce at 11.3%.
Turning to the remaining industries, construction made up to 7.6% of the total workforce, compared to 6.8% and 5.5% of education and tourism in 1993. Their figures all increased slightly to 8.3%, 7.5% and 7.3%, respectively, in 2009.