News Corp totally clueless about the modern Australian labour market
Photo credit: Stockcake
You may have noticed the News Corporation newspapers (and their corresponding online versions) are all excited about the launch of their national advertorial campaign, “Back Australia: It’s Good For All Of Us”, featuring some of Australia’s largest companies as cheerleaders, namely Bunnings, BHP, Cadbury, Coles, Harvey Norman, Qantas, REA Group, R.M. Williams, TechnologyOne, Vodafone and Westpac.
Or, as Crikey’s politics editor Bernard Keane, scathingly notes, “That’d be wage thief Bunnings, wage thief BHP, price gouger and wage thief Coles, price gouger, deceiver of customers, wage thief and illegal sacker of workers Qantas, price gouger and majority News Corp-owned REA Group, and wage thief and Australia’s worst money launderer Westpac. Doubtless all are grateful to News Corp for helping them whitewash their reputations.”
News Corp’s launch press release promises “The campaign will roll out in two stages until April 2026…..” , and that “Back Australia is supported by a comprehensive Marketing and PR campaign to create a movement that celebrates all things Australian and inspires action”, which almost certainly means the sales reps at all of the company’s mastheads have their FY2026 bonus payments tied to campaign ad sales targets.
The New York headquartered owner of a majority of Australia’s daily newspapers is clearly not a fan of the rapid rise of service jobs, with its call for Australian consumers to help the economy ‘make more things’.
As Keane, in an earlier piece, excoriated governments, on both sides of the political aisle, for deciding they are prepared to pay for having a specific type of manufacturing sector (referencing the local car manufacturing industry of last Century): “….hugely profitable multinationals smell the money and pile in, threatening to shutter facilities unless they can get in on the taxpayer-funded action. All that desire for a country that makes things reduces down to gifting taxpayer money to foreign shareholders” (In 2013, I published my own rant about protectionism and car manufacturing employment).
A few days after the News Corp “Back Australia” launch, Jobs and Skills Australia published Connecting for impact – The Jobs and Skills Report 2025 which rather succinctly encapsulated why a nostalgia-tinged yearning for a return to making things is comprehensively at odds with the direction of the Australian economy and labour market.
Some of the main points being that over the last 10 years, there have been:
- 886,700 more workers in Health Care and Social Assistance (now exceeding 2.3 million workers)
- 359,700 more workers in Professional, Scientific and Technical Services (now exceeding 1.3 million workers)
- 337,800 more workers in Education and Training (now exceeding 1.3 million workers)
The report noted that, “Lower skilled roles saw modest growth, reflecting a shift toward higher skilled jobs” and “Workforce participation has increased, largely driven by increased participation from women and mature aged people.”
Most significantly,
- Service industries account for around 80% of Australian employment in 2025
- Almost 90% of employment growth over the past 10 years has been in service industries
- Manufacturing employment has only risen by about 30,000 in the past ten years, just 1.07% of the period’s total national employment growth of 2.8 million
- Service industries will continue to dominate employment growth, with the top 3 industries contributing to 49% of total projected employment growth from 2025 to 2035.
- The occupations that are projected to have the strongest employment growth over the decade are mostly those in health and care fields, with top 3 being Dental Assistants (26.8%), Nursing Support and Personal Care Workers (24.7%) and Ambulance Officers and Paramedics (22.6%).
Keane zeros in on the most significant problem with the nostalgia for manufacturing jobs:”…..where are the workers coming from for this nostalgia-fest? There is no pool of untapped workers. Do we enforce national service for baristas, requiring them to work on a factory floor for two years? A bonus to lure hairdressers into metal manufacturing? Do we march aged care and disability care workers into factories and ditch this wimpy stuff about the care economy? The workers, of course, would have to come from migration…..”
Any recruiter who services the manufacturing sector will tell you the difficulty they have in finding workers to take and stay in those jobs. And that’s never going to change.
Maybe News Corp could employ some journalists who specialise in the labour market to help those at News’s corporate HQ stop embarrassing themselves with their ignorance of the modern Australian economy.
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The disaster that is our country’s car manufacturing industry
Manufacturing is under pressure predominantly due to policy settings – energy, IR, red tape, taxation being prime among them (and especially so in Victoria where our manufacturing base is strongest). This and a lack of innovation which is really part of the same suite of issues. Finding operators is only one challenge and not a defining one.
Manufacturing industries create fantastic jobs (many of which won’t be captured as ‘manufacturing / producing jobs’ in the data) across STEM, professional, executive, trades and indeed create blue collar operations roles which are especially important in the regions.
If our system allowed manufacturers to make decent margins, much more could be automated and fewer better paid blue collar and semi-skilled roles would remain. Manufacturers are also crowded out by big government projects when it comes to finding trades as they just can’t afford to compete.
I am not at all in support of governments propping up industries that aren’t commercially viable (as they are currently doing) but I am indeed in favour of the government removing the policy own-goals that make these industries unsustainable, are forcing multi-generational family businesses to shutter and sending large corporates offshore.
Couldn’t agree more, Scott. Policy own-goals (first home owners’ schemes are a classic example in another policy area) are incredibly frustrating.