Friday, March 19, 2010

Astonishing claim

In Australia "health and welfare " jobs have just overtaken the retail sector in terms of employment. Currently 1 in 9 jobs is in health and social assistance.

According to The Age;

"It will keep getting bigger," says labour market specialist Mark Wooden, of the Melbourne Institute.

The entire sector will one day account for one in every two workers ".


Good lord. How can that be sustainable?

In NZ one in 10 workers is employed in health and social assistance (it rises to closer to 2 for females). But 1.5 works in retail trade and accommodation.

The same upward trend is occurring though. In September 2004 the sector accounted for 8.9 percent of the workforce. Five years later it stood at 10.2 percent.

Returning to the claim I guess what he is saying is that society will become so efficient at creating wealth without labour input that it will be able to afford for every second worker to be a health or care worker. Can't see it myself.

5 comments:

Mark.V. said...

I suspect all these health and care workers will be paper shufflers and policy analysts, I don't believe they will be at the coal face actualy doing the important work.

Anonymous said...


The entire sector will one day account for one in every two workers ".

Good lord. How can that be sustainable?


It can't and it's not. Rather, it shows the analyst is innumerate.

Peter said...

The entire sector will one day account for one in every two workers

By that time, the stress of supporting so many non-workers will mean every employed person will need their own personal therapist.

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately while it may not be affordable either now or in the future, demand for healthcare will increase rapidly over the next 30 or 40 years in the US to unbelievable levels, and it is predicted that there simply will not be enough doctors or healthcare workers to sustain the demand of all the baby boomers needing care in their retirement. As it stands medicare will run out of money and crash within 10-15 years without reform also.

As a country with a slightly lower level of children born per person, I believe we face some of these same problems in the future though our system appears sustainable for the time being. However I think that the ACC rises we were given recently will be seen as a drop in the bucket!

The huge predicted increase in demand for healthcare services is documented here in a report by a the international chiropractic association starting page 5, as they look to prepare their profession to be ready for the huge upsurge in demand.
http://www.chiropractic.org/legislation/medicare_white_paper.pdf

Anonymous said...

international chiropractic association

Right. fucking quacks. More lefty scum who like labour and greenies should just be taken out and shot.


Productive members of society will always be able to obtain the health care they and their families need.

Bludgers? - who cares!