The latest quarterly survey by the Australian Institute of Geoscientists, which is now tracking the Australia’s geoscientist employment slump into its third year, shows employment prospects for Australia’s geoscientists deteriorated even further in the first quarter of 2016, driven down by lower metals and petroleum prices.
Around half (49%) of the unemployed have now been jobless in the sector for 12 months, continuing a trend that has been ongoing since September 2011, but which has worsened since 2013.
The new March 2016 results broke previous “worst” records, crashing further to the lowest measure of geoscientist employment conditions in Australia since these surveys commenced in June 2009, during the Global Financial Crisis.
At March 31 the unemployment rate amongst Australian geoscientists was 19.5% and the under-employment rate remained at 23.4%, both figures are much higher than Australia’s official unemployment and under-employment rates.
The survey, which attracted 1013 responses of some 8000 people with geoscientist qualifications in Australia, not all of whom are pursuing a career in the profession, indicates that around 42.9% of professionals are unemployed or under-employed.
Almost 60% of self-employed geoscientists were unable to secure more than one quarter of their desired workload during the quarter, pointing to a real unemployment rate of 33.3%.
The worst states were Queensland, followed by New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory, while the rates were similarly depressed in Western Australia, Victoria and South Australia.
The increasing unemployment and underemployment trend was also not uniform across Australia, with marginal increases in Australia while unemployment increased by more than 5% while underemployment amongst self-employed geoscientists decreased in Queensland.
Both unemployment and underemployment increased in New South Wales.
In terms of experience the AIG survey shows that some of the most experienced professionals in Australia not being able to contribute to the mentoring and professional development of their younger colleagues, and to important lessons learned in the past potentially being forgotten.
“The latter issue compounds the problem of cyclicity in employment affecting Australia’s resource industries, where the boom and bust nature of the sector impedes productivity through the loss of corporate knowledge and repetition of previous work, particular in exploration and discovery of new minerals and energy resources,” the survey warned.
If anything in the survey results can be seen as positive, 43% of geoscientists in employment felt confident of maintaining their employment for at least the next 12 months; a marked improvement since December 2015 when only 36% of respondents felt confident of retaining employment.
Four in five employed geoscientists are in full-time work.
Although the results from this survey are the worst recorded since this series of surveys commenced in June 2009, there are a few signs of a possible turn-around in the fortunes of geoscientists.
“The rate at which geoscientist unemployment has been increasing, particularly since September 2014, eased in the latest results,” AIG president Wayne Spilsbury said.
“The proportion of geoscientists currently in employment who felt confident about the security of their jobs increased, even if only slightly, for the first time in 18 months.”
The latest survey also revealed a small but sharp increase in the proportion of geoscientists in employment describing themselves as self-employed.
“We’ve seen this in previous surveys, but at times when geoscience employment was in a better state than it is now,” Spilsbury said.
“If there is light appearing at the end of the tunnel, then now is the best time to act to catalyse investment in exploration at State and Federal levels to take full-advantage of an emerging opportunity.
“We need action to make this a reality.”
