Key findings from FACTBase Bulletin No.49

The latest FACTBase Bulletin No. 49 is an input into the Committee for Perth’s Get a Move On! project which is being undertaken in partnership with RAC. The report, called The Dilemma in Sub­Regional Commuting: Matching Resident Job Skills to Workplace Location examines the job skills matching within metropolitan sub­regions by mapping where people live and where they work.

Key Findings

• People live in a particular region for a variety of reasons, such as access to work, urban amenity like good schools, shops and parks, social networks, status and a particular lifestyle such as a seachange or treechange.
• The outer sub­regions operate as large residential areas for workers in the Central sub­region, which contains the highest number of workers.
• The Northwest sub­region provides the least numbers of jobs across all skill types for its residents, except for machinery operators and drivers.
• The Southeast sub­region has the least number of jobs to residents.
• The heaviest commuter flows are to the Central sub­region from the adjacent sub­regions of Northwest, Northeast, Southwest and Southeast.
• The Peel sub­region has the least number of people working across all occupation types yet has the best job­skills match for residents of all of the outer sub­regions, with substantially more people living and working in the region than travelling to Central. It also has a more even spread of commuters travelling to each of the sub­regions.
• Sales workers are the highest retained occupation type with more people working and living in their own sub­region.
• There is no simple solution to the complex commuting patterns of people travelling to work. Planning authorities need to explore alternative mechanisms to redress jobs­skills imbalances between the outer and Central sub­regions.