The great work shift: How the ups and downs of occupations drive property demand

The coming of the coronavirus has hastened the complete digital transformation of the Australian workforce.

There are two jobs that have gone gangbusters over the past 30 years, namely aged and disabled carer, and human resources manager.

The coming of the coronavirus has hastened the complete digital transformation of the Australian workforce. Jobs like checkout operator, call centre operator, waiter and even receptionist are either on the backfoot or are being transformed by the advent of new technology.

And also by the willingness of customers to accommodate new technology. I think that customers are often knowing accomplices in the wilful elimination of jobs by technology.

The rise and fall of jobs over time is the stuff that underpins the property industry. The rise of a professional services workforce drives demand for office space. Growth in the checkout operator population generates demand for big-box retailing. And any increase in the storeperson workforce creates demand for warehouse space.

Megatrends in the demand for different jobs, and for their workforces, are demand drivers for the property industry. And in this regard, there is no better dataset by which to track the rise and fall of jobs over time than the estimate of worker numbers across 430 jobs, completed quarterly by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Between February 1992 and February 2022 the Australian workforce jumped by 77 per cent from 7.5 million workers to 13.4 million workers. But disguised within this broad increase – caused by population and workforce participation growth – are the ups and downs of different jobs that drive the property industry.

Let’s start with the ups

There are two jobs that have gone gangbusters over the past 30 years, namely aged and disabled carer, and human resources manager. The former added 264,000 positions within this time frame while the latter added 133,000 positions. Human resources managers operate within offices while aged and disabled carers work in purpose-built facilities in suburbs and towns across the Australian continent.

If ever there was a single data source that should be used as the basis for the strategic planning of property (and other) businesses, this is it. And with regard to the never-ending rising tide of aged and disabled carers, the baby boomer population has yet to reach the frail-elderly age group which kinda starts at 80.

The rise in human resources managers on the other hand reflects a shift in values and behaviour encapsulated in concepts like diversity, inclusion and of course the requirements of OH&S. It also reflects a shift in the perceived need by business to better manage the performance and expectations of the workforce.

The issue with aged care workers isn’t just the pace and scale with which this occupation has expanded over 30 years – it is the need for specialist property, management systems, staff training programs and various iterations of management and regulation. All of which is the stuff that drives demand for more human resources workers and property to accommodate their workplaces.

And then there is the surge in demand for jobs that deliver what might be loosely called wellness services. Jobs like fitness instructor up 33,000 over 30 years, and beauty therapist up 31,000 over the same time frame.

And both of which tend to require specialist accommodation in the shopfronts of suburban strips and amid the activated street-fronts of smart apartment developments. Out with the newsagent, the bookstore, the butcher and the mini-hardware store; in with a pilates studio, a manicurist, a waxing facility, the ubiquitous hairdresser and maybe even a 24-hour gym. Perhaps toss in a tattooist in some locations.

Interestingly, it is the hairdresser that has proven to be remarkably resilient to changes in fashion and technology over time. Here is a business that must remain local, that cannot be digitised (apart from bookings), and that thrives on changes in fashion which in fact drives demand for even newer hairstyles. Pretty much all else about the suburban shopping strip has changed – the tenant, the building, the clientele – but the indestructible hairdresser remains stoically unchanged.

The rise in sportspersons, up 12,000 over 30 years, doesn’t directly translate into demand for property apart from the odd stadium upgrade which might include shops and offices, but it does drive a culture of attending to, improving, embellishing and adorning the human body.

Wellness, beauty, fitness and sport are powerful drivers of demand for specialist suburban property. Monitor the continued rise in these workforces to track this megatrend.

Now to job losses

Firstly it must be said that all job losses are painful for employees losing jobs but when viewed from the perspective of 30-year trends they are nevertheless inevitable. Not every job in all parts of the workforce can expand. There’s always adjustments, downsizings, rightsizings, recalibrations to market.

And nowhere is the loss of jobs more apparent than in the corporate world where the secretary population has collapsed by 88,000 over three decades. At this rate, the secretary will be extinct by 2030 (see graphic 2).

And the thing that decimated the secretary population wasn’t a meteorite as it was the case for the dinosaurs but rather it was the advent of the personal computer. All of sudden bosses were typing memos, recalling digital files, reconciling expenses, managing their own digital diary. The secretary is a workplace life form that flourished within, and not beyond, the 20th century.

The farm has also been the place of worker diminution over the past 30 years. Mixed crop and livestock farmers contracted by 77,000 over this period as some farmers bought out their neighbour. Farms became bigger, less labour intensive, more mechanised, and ultimately more productive. In fact, that mixed crop and livestock farmer probably sold out and relocated to Gold Coast and bought a Main Beach apartment, thus driving demand for the property industry.

If farms are becoming more corporatised, more mechanised, then perhaps there’s a rising need for agribusiness warehouses, for machinery sales facilities, for downstream value-adding to crops in regional centres. That’s a trend that delivers more business for the local property industry.

Bank worker (aka teller) jobs have been contracting for much of the 21st century. And the reason is self-evident: when was the last time you were in a bank? The bigger question is whether the functionality of banking can be delivered more or less entirely online? And by a player that isn’t necessarily domiciled within Australia, in the same way that the US-based Amazon group, for example, delivers retail products to Australian households.

Photographic developers and printers are simply no longer required. The concept of the photograph has been transformed; they now exist in the ether, in the cloud, or end up on the hard-drive of old PCs sent to landfill.

Switchboard operators have long been superseded by newer telephony technology. And the garbage collector has been usurped by whiz-bang waste trucks with driver-controlled extendible arms. Mechanisation killed the garbage man.

Sewing machinists have long since disappeared from Australian factories and re-established themselves in similar facilities in Guangzhou, Dhaka and Ho-Chi-Minh City. I doubt that Australians will ever see the return of the sewing machinist life form.

And as for jeweller, maybe the demise of this occupation reflects the loss of artisan craftsmanship skills or the rise of imported cheap-labour manufactured jewellery.

In either case the evidence is that the Australian workforce is a fizzing, growing, shrinking, contorting amorphous mass that creates demand for specialist property in unique locations. But it can also withdraw, change direction, substitute products and thus diminish demand for some workers and their property habitats. That’s why this occupational data over the long term is so important.

Conclusion

The lesson from all of this, and from the extracted data, is that the long-term demand for commercial, retail and industrial property is ultimately driven by the successful operation of a business and its employees.

And with so much changing because of the pandemic, it is important to see, and to form an opinion about, the long-term drivers of demand for property.

This can be done in part by ­monitoring the rise and fall of jobs over years, decades and generations to ensure that you’re always en pointe when it comes to meeting the property requirements of the Australian people.

Bernard Salt is executive director of The Demographics Group; research and graphics by Hari Hara Priya Kannan.