uk_grenada

I suppose its a good job then that universities are commercial concerns with profit driven management.

Beoz

Two sides to that argument but my personal opinion is that it is in a countries vested interest to extract as many intelligent people out of the population as possible.

uk_grenada

Well the Ponzi scheme the govt run to fund it helps, but are you aware that a lot of private schools are now telling more of their students to go into vocational schemes like apprenticeships. Good ones like rolls Royce are supposedly now more valued and difficult to get into than oxford/Cambridge degrees.

Beoz

Apprenticeships are valued education too you know. If I had my time again, there's a 1000 to reasons to become a tradesman, most of which require some form of tertiary education.

Why are you looking down upon apprenticeships?

uk_grenada

Im not, great idea - pointing out that their star is in the ascendant, 10 years ago public school kids would not be being told to get on them. And no loans too...

Beoz

http://minister.infrastructure.gov.au/chester/releases/2017/june/dc183_2017.aspx

Yeah bring it on. Less trucks around airport, Green Square and the nice beaches of the south eastern suburbs.

Less jobs for the truckies too? Hardly. Railing more freight to the west means more trucks needed to shift the stuff from there.

Good stuff Libs. Years of neglect from Bob Carr and his clowns is no stopper for progress.

ozzieeagle

Believe it or not, Attrition in industries that are facing Automation is actually winning the personnel battle. Again they've delayed our packages, because of staff movement, within post. I actually had a finishing date 29th September and a final payout figure and they've delayed it until Jan 1st.... I now suspect it won't happen. 1 billion dollars spent and hardly any job losses on state of the art machinery, this time it really is good machinery, and hardly any job losses !!! A lot of that has been attrition though, with no replacement staff over the last 5 years or so.

Population growth will also stymie the projected job losses caused by Automation as well. The service industry will grow and grow.

If you look at a side issue, say road building and see how that is supposed to affect traffic flow and congestion and whatever they do, because of population growth and more cars, they don't seem to be able to keep up. I think Automation currently is running the same battle and it is population growth that is stopping the job losses overall.

Sure mail has died, however, the amount of non-machineable and never machineable crumpled up small packages has gone through the stratosphere.... Hence jobs stay, same people doing slightly different duties.


In the case of the Ports road, the jobs will shift to what is "currently" at the end of that road. Because whats getting carried is growing at a massive rate all due to changes in needs combined with population growth.

No way will Aus Post go broke, in fact from this point they will grow into a mega company. 3 years ago they had had it, no one at Post envisaged what parcels would do to this extent.

I'd say everyone is getting caught out by this very fast change in population growth, customer needs and customer demands.

Poor old Myer though, they really have had it, but those jobs will shift to Amazon, Post, JB Hi Fi and I reckon Harvey Norman will actually grow as well, they will be able to move with the times, unlike Myer, although they, Harvey's and JB will become much more of an online business.

Harvey Norman, actually have one of the best logistic fleets in the country, they need to grab onto that fact and start utilising it right now.

JB Hi Fi will actually benefit from Amazon I reckon as more people will realise they can buy all of their stuff online. The real battle will be Harvey v Amazon in this country at least so watch out for where those jobs go at both of those places. I now bet they grow at the expense of everyone around them.

GarryP

Not sure that makes much sense.

JB Hifi is square in the middle of small consumer electronics - one of the things that Amazon does best. Therefore unless they can somehow cut their prices dramatically, which means cutting their rent, why wouldn't Amazon win? After all, they killed Comet and Dixons in the UK. Obviously Hardly Normal's electronics offerings are also in the firing line, but they at least have the beds and homewares; and the grannies, to help them survive.

BTW population growth isn't going to solve anything, because those 2% more people per year coming to Melbourne need jobs too. So if automation gets rid of jobs, you still get net underemployment. You can see that in the latest figures, where 54000 new jobs just kept the unemployment rate steady, and the total hours worked rose only 0.4%. And that's before large scale automation hits Melbourne.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-1...oyment/8944680

Beoz

That's right. Jobs will shift. They always do.

The ports thing in Sydney is interesting right now.

Port Botany is full. No where to store more stuff nearby. They are turning the freight line from there to the west into a 24/7 movement corridor where there's plenty of room.

On top of that, the developers want the land around the port because its within 10km of the CBD, next to the beach, and near the airport. Ching ching.

Yep. Its a sink or swim direction for the retailers. The smart ones are using ebay and Amazon to shift stock. The old models like Myer will just die.

Shifting stuck is certainly a growth busniess. Your job is safe. Jump on board.

ozzieeagle

As long as JB Hi fi stays within a bulls roar of Amazons prices, people will stay loyal to them. JB will need to up the ante on home delivery though, and that will happen.

We've had large scale automation at Post and like I keep repeating attrition is staying ahead of the job cuts. In fact, I think it's entirely possible they may have to take people on. Depends on what happens within the logistics industry. We are getting more and more non-machinable packages all the time, mostly from overseas, I was looking for a picture of them before to illustrate what is happening. Small white plastic soft packaging that you have to unravel to read the address. I can't see them fixing and straightening the 10,000's of those that we are getting in the foreseeable future, they all have to be hand sorted.

Shard

What kind of jobs are amongst the 54000?

Interesting chart, the male participation rate is steadily declining over the decades, which says something.

GarryP

Well given the way the total hours has hardly changed, I'd suggest they weren't full time, and others had gone part time too. So less salary to go round, which ties in with wage stagnation.

And as I say, that's before automation really starts taking bites out of employment. Australia, as usual, will probably be late to the show.

Beoz

Underemployment is measured by a survey. I have never been surveyed. Have you?

Shard

Two kinds of underemployment: insufficient hours and over-qualificaton (grads in retail, for example). I think it's very hard to measure, but that doesn't mean it isn't happening.

Beoz

Don't believe everything you read in the fiction of left wing press. A bit of balance is good.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2017/01/23/dispelling-the-myth-of-underemployed-college-graduates/?s=trending#372f6ffe1365