According to the Labour Force Survey, the industries that have contributed the most to employment growth over the past two years are health care & social assistance, construction and (perhaps more surprisingly) manufacturing (Graph 2): The increase in health-related jobs reflects both longer-term trends, such as the ageing of the population, as well as the rollout of the National Disability Insurance scheme over the past couple of years.
Construction employment is close to 10 per cent of total employment, and this is around its highest share of employment since the 1920s. Construction employment has been supported by the large amount of activity in residential and infrastructure construction, particularly in the eastern states. More recently, there has been a noteworthy increase in manufacturing employment.