FACTBase Bulletin 39 - The Geography of Perth’s Youth Employment

Using 1991-2011 time series data and the 2011 Census data derived via the ABS online tool TableBuilder, this Bulletin presents an overview of the demographic and spatial profile of Perth’s population aged 15-24 years.

Key Findings

• Compared to other Australian cities, Perth has a high youth population and was the only city to experience a double digit growth rate.
• The central and western metropolitan SLA have collected the highest proportion (over 16%) of Perth’s youth population. Similar to the senior population, the areas that exhibited the most growth were in the north, south east and south west.
• The three most popular occupations amongst young people were sales workers (21.9%), technicians and trades workers (18.9%) and community and personal service workers (17.2%).
• There were clear gendered differences in certain occupations such as males outnumbering females in the technicians and trade workers occupation and females outnumbering males amongst the administrative forms of employment.
• As the resources sector moves away from being largely labour-intensive to capital intensive, this may provoke greater competition for jobs within these sectors that have traditionally employed young people.