A detailed overview of Illawarra’s commuter population to Greater Sydney drew plenty of interest at the September industry breakfast hosted by i3net on Friday.
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The presentation was based on an analysis of Australian Bureau of Statistics’ 2016 Census data that became available earlier this year.
Wollongong City Council economic development manager Mark Grimson revealed there are about 163,680 people in the local workforce and 79 per cent of them (129,207) work locally. But there are 34,473 Illawarra people who worked outside the region.
Of those 66 per cent of those (22,830) commutes to the Greater Sydney metropolitan area for work, 23 per cent (7,902) have no fixed address outside the region for work and 11 per cent (3741) work in other locations.
Where commuters live saw 78 per cent from Wollongong, 13 per cent from Shellharbour, 4 per cent from Kiama and 5 per cent from the Shoalhaven.
The majority do not use public transport. 65 per cent of commuters travel by private car.
A third of those who travel to Sydney have a Bachelor degree or higher.
White collar workers make up 62 per cent (14,189) of the 22,830 commuters to Greater Sydney and blue collar workers made up 36 per cent (8,291).
By occupation 25 per cent were professionals, 16 per cent were technicians and tradies, 14.3 per cent were managers, 12.1 per cent clerical and administrative workers and 10.7 per cent were community and personal service workers, 8.5 per cent machinery operators and drivers, 6.2 per cent labourers and 5.7 per cent sales workers.
“When we look at the top 10 occupation groups specialist managers come in at number one but a lot of school teachers travel each day particularly to Sydney’s southern suburbs.” Mr Grimson said.
That is followed by business, human resource and marketing professionals at number three on the list.
The top three occupations among the 3642 trade commuters each day were electricians, mechanical engineers and building and engineering technicians. Bricklayers, carpenters and joiners came in at number four, auto electricians and mechanics at six and plumbers at seven.
“We (council) quite often work with businesses particularly looking to relocate to the region. We have assisted a number of them with a really detailed analysis of who is sitting in that commuter pool. It is useful when they are look at it from a workforce planning perspective and who they can tap into”.
Mr Grimson said some manufacturing and engineering companies looking to relocate saw a real advantage in coming to Wollongong is the calibre of the skill set compared to where they were operating from in Sydney.
And before NEC came to the Wollongong Innovation Campus they did a lot of work with the company analysing the workforce and how they might tap into the universities IT graduate pool.
Obviously most people in a heartbeat would actually like to work in Wollongong
- Mark Grimson
They looked at who was commuting each day and had 2000 applicants.
“Obviously most people in a heartbeat would actually like to work in Wollongong,” he said.
Given he was speaking at an Illawarra Innovative Industry Network (i3net) industry breakfast Mr Grimson pointed out that manufacturing ranked seventh on the list of industries for commuters.
And they tended to travel to Sutherland, Canterbury Bankstown, Campbelltown, Liverpool and Botany Bay.
The top job titles among manufacturing sector commuters were production managers, metal fitters and machinists, sales reps and structural steel and welding tradespeople and the median income was $70,200 a year.
“With skills shortages an issue back on the agenda with a lot of businesses at the moment I thought it might be interesting to give you a bit of an update about the commuter population,” Mr Grimson said.
“One of the things we say frequently when we are talking to businesses is that one of the advantages Wollongong and the Illawarra has is that we have a large very skilled workforce. We also have a large skilled workforce of people who commute to Sydney”.
That means they know if they relocate to the region they can potentially tap into a broad range of highly skilled people who would be open to working close to where they live.
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