Top growing jobs that pay well

SO you’ve got your mind set on a career that will earn you a decent salary? Take heart, jobseekers, there is positive news.

SCIENCE, technology and engineering jobs are growing strong, backing up calls to prioritise related subjects in schools.

Recommendations put to the Prime Minister by a group of world-leading entrepreneurs, as reported by News Corp yesterday, included a focus on maths, science and digital subjects in the school curriculum.

Now, new research from SEEK has revealed positive news for jobseekers in these fields.

In the science and technology industry, the largest year-on-year increases in advertised roles were in mathematics, statistics and information sciences (64.8 per cent growth), environmental, earth and geosciences (57.3 per cent) and biotechnology and genetics (23.7 per cent).

Software engineering student Rohan Mirchandani says the motivation for choosing his career was “split 50-50” between his interest in the area and the salary potential.

For engineers, the strongest job ad growth was in project engineering (65.5 per cent), materials handling engineering (62.8 per cent) and supervising (54.3 per cent).

And for the information and communications technology (ICT) industry, computer operators (29.3 per cent), software engineers (20.5 per cent) and cyber security professionals (14.9 per cent) experienced the largest increases.

SEEK Australia and New Zealand managing director Kendra Banks said the ICT sector continued to be one of Australia’s largest employing sectors.

More than 15,000 roles were advertised on SEEK yesterday.

“Online/cyber security is an area of major investment for businesses to protect customer data and their experience online,” Ms Banks said.

In other good news for the ICT industry, many roles also offered six-figure pay packets.

Software engineering roles on SEEK had an average advertised salary of $109,427 and cyber security roles averaged $117,053.

Software engineering student Rohan Mirchandani, who also works part time at two artificial intelligence start-ups, said motivation for choosing his career was “split 50-50” between his interest in the area and the salary potential.

Rohan Mirchandani says people should choose a career that interests them.

“A lot of people are drawn in by the idea that companies like Google pay $150,000 straight out of uni,” the Queensland University of Technology student said.

“Money definitely was a factor (for me but) I see friends choose an area just for money and quickly find it’s not for them and they bounce between things forever.

“People should make sure they are actually interested in the area they are working in because if they are not motivated at the start, they won’t be 10 years down the line.”

Despite the strong job growth in science, engineering and technology last year, mining and trades were the top-performing industries according to the SEEK data.

Many of these roles did still require science, maths and digital skills, though.

Mining and trades were the top-performing industries, says SEEK..

The top five jobs for ad growth were oil and gas drilling (94 per cent growth), mining, resources and energy surveying (93.5 per cent), mining drill and blast (84.4 per cent), welding and boiler making (75.6 per cent) and fitting, turning and machining (67.9 per cent).

Tom Reid, acting director for industry services at Australia’s peak resources and energy group AMMA, said he expected a slight upturn in demand in mining in 2018.

“While we will likely never see the same levels of skills shortages experienced five years ago, some employers are speaking of a ‘mini boom’ this year in key operational and production-based roles,” he said.

“It is likely to be an employees’ market as conditions improve and there is renewed optimism in expanding existing resources projects and even committing to new projects.

“It’s also great to see more women getting involved in the industry following employer efforts to make their organisations more attractive to broader demographics of workers.”

Originally published as Top growing jobs that pay well