Census 2021: Four sectors employ 40 per cent of the workforce

Health care, retail, construction and education employ the most people in Australia.

The most common fields of study in Australia were business, teaching, nursing and building. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Ian Currie

Healthcare, retail, construction and education employ the most people in Australia, together accounting for more than 40 per cent of the workforce.

Census data confirms hospitality is dominated by the young, with 45 per cent of workers in the accommodation and food industries under 25 years; almost 30 per cent of people working in agriculture, forestry and fishing were aged 60 years and over, compared with 11 per cent across all industries.

Sales assistants, registered nurses and general clerks were the top three occupations, as they were in 2016 and 2011.

Females account for 10 per cent of the 109,000 construction managers in 2021, up from 7 per cent in 2016, while the number of females with qualifications in building construction management has doubled over five years to 2000.

Just 1 per cent of plumbers, carpenters, bricklayers, concreters and roof tilers are female.

Highlighting 12 insights about work and study from the census, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said security science was the fastest growing field of study, and software and application program­ming was among the top 20 occupations in Australia.

The most common fields of study in Australia were business, teaching, nursing and building.

More than 11 million people nat­ionally have a vocational or tertiary qualification, and 1.1 million people are enhancing their skills by studying after obtaining a non-school qualification.

Qualifications in southern Asian languages more than doubled since 2016, becoming the third fastest growing field of study.

Punjabi is one of the top five languages used at home in line with the growth in Indian and Nepalese communities in Australia.

The ABS data provided insights into how many hours Australian worked in the week before the census, with 38 per cent working 40 hours or more, down from 46 per cent a decade ago.

Of those working 40 hours or more, 86 per cent did fewer than 15 hours of domestic work; one-third had childcare responsibilities and 11 per cent provided unpaid assistance for a person with a disability, health condition or due to old age.