Australia’s Mining Boom and Property

The Minerals Council of Australia is now predicting that the mining sector will need another 87,000 more workers over the next decade.

Most jobs will be for skilled and semi-skilled mineral sector tradesmen and and amaller increase in related professionals. The commodities of biggest demand are iron ore and coal, though copper, uranium and gold are also in high demand and likely to remain so with the continuing Chinese and Indian demand for minerals. The locations of these minerals will dictate the growth of Australia’s economy for decades to come.

Australia already effectively enjoys full employment so the new jobs can really only come from either newly trained or re-trained workers or immigrants, either from within Australia or from overseas. Australia has just recently relaxed their skilled migrant visa category and it is likely that there will be a continual number of overseas immigrants attracted by the demand for workers.

The breakdown of where the jobs will be is of the most interest to those interested in Australia’s property market. The biggest winners are:

Western Australia: is projected to gain 48,000 people or 55% of the total increase, in a state with one of the smaller populations. Of Western Australia’s 2.1 million inhabitants over 1.5 million live in Perth, it therefore doesn’t look like the demand for Perth’s houses will be decreasing soon. Although most of jobs are likely to be located in the Pilbara iron ore mines with the major towns of Port Hedland and Dampier its likely that a large amount of the increase will be people living in Perth on a fly-in-fly-out contracts as the large mining companies are less than interested in building towns on site which are located in someone of the most isolated places anywhere.

Queensland’s demand for workers is projected to increase by 23,500 - which is most likely to besed around and near the Bowen Basin coal fields, inland from Mackay and Rockhampton and the Ipswich Basin nearer Brisbane.

South Australia is the real boom story though -the projected increase of 16,000 workers is a massive 100% increase in mining workers for the state. The big project here is Olympic Dam massive expansion of its Copper and Uranium mine. Roxby Dam is the purpose built town, some 550km north of Adelaide, and current proposals is that its population will increase from 4000 to 10000. It would seem a safe beat that some of those new workers will prefer to live in Adelaide and fly-in.