Gold Coast education: Coast’s under-25s population falls sparks need for youth employment strategy
THE Gold Coast is facing a professional brain drain, with data revealing graduates and young people are abandoning the city. Education figures reveal the reasons behind our own ‘generation exit’.
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THE Gold Coast is facing a professional brain drain with data revealing graduates and young people are abandoning the city in droves.
Despite being Australia’s sixth largest city and its fastest growing, census data shows the number of people under 25 has declined by 2 per cent over the past 12 years.
During the same period the city’s population has grown 23 per cent.
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These figures have sparked calls for an urgent focus on creating new employment opportunities, diversifying the city’s economy and offering greater career paths.
Demographer and social researcher Mark McCrindle said the figures showed the need for a youth retention strategy on the Gold Coast.
“This highlights that one of the fastest growing cities in Australia is on the map for many reasons, but young people are following career opportunities elsewhere,” he said.
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“The Coast needs to remind the local population that it is both an education hotspot, a small business heartland, which has many employment opportunities and a great lifestyle to suit.
“There is no reason for the Coast to keep losing those teens and 20-somethings.
“Certainly an engagement strategy would be a start because this trend is not going away by itself.”
In 2006 32.2 per cent of the Gold Coast’s population was under 25 years, a figure which has now fallen to 30.5 per cent.
During the same period the city’s median age increased from 37 to 39 years.
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Education industry figures have told the Gold Coast Bulletin there is a perception the city offers only limited career opportunities, forcing ambitious people to seek employment elsewhere, including in Brisbane.
Bond University vice chancellor Professor Tim Brailsford said graduates faced limited opportunities on the Coast.
“It appears that despite the many appeals of the Sunshine State, the education and job opportunities for young adults are less favourable in comparison to the large metropolitan centres of Melbourne and Sydney,” he said.
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“Despite the high quality of the Coast’s educational institutions, it will take time for the growth and evolution of the Gold Coast to reach its potential.”
Gold Coasters are crying out for a much broader range of employment with 90 per cent of respondents to the Bulletin’s Golden Age survey earlier this year saying the job market needed to be “diversified”.
Dubbed the small business capital of Australia, the Gold Coast economy is home to 64,848 businesses, 34.5 per cent of which are involved in either construction or real estate.
Retail, healthcare and hospitality are ranked as the city’s top three employers of the 254,912 jobs available on the Gold Coast.
Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate said creating new employment opportunities and trumpeting the city’s increasingly diversified economy would be a major focus for 2019 along with a major infrastructure rollout.
“Young Gold Coasters have had to leave to hunt for jobs in the careers they wish to pursue and it breaks our heart that young people have to go away for 10 years to find work before they cam come back,” he said.
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“In 2019 we will be accelerating our message about the Coast and flying the flag, so you will see a focus on expanding the city’s job opportunities - with the film industry as well as through the broader economy.
“You will see a lot of start-ups and by the end of 2019, I think you will see there will be far more entrepreneurs and their companies here on the Coast.”
Cr Tate has been a key backer of a push to create a so-called “tower of power’ on the Gold
Coast which would house a State Government satellite office which he said would create employment opportunities and stimulate further development and businesses in Southport.
The youth figures come in comparison to the over-65s market which is booming.
Census figures show the number of over-65s living in the city grew 28 per cent between 2011 and 2016.
This brought an extra 21,000 older people to the city, increasing the number of over-65s from 72,000 to nearly 94,000.
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