Where Are the Jobs? Part 2: The Geography of Western Sydney's Jobs Deficit

This is the second of three reports which analyse Western Sydney’s jobs problem as we head into the middle decades of the 21st century. In this report we check on the effects on jobs availability in Western Sydney arising from high levels of regional economic growth prior to COVID-19. We undertake detailed analysis of how jobs growth has been progressing in different parts of Western Sydney, especially in the context of rising demand for jobs from the region’s rapidly growing working-age population, as described in our first report. In particular, we examine the performance of centres targeted for major jobs growth, like Parramatta, Sydney Olympic Park and parts of Baulkham Hills, and assess the extent to which they are evolving as genuine metropolitan jobs centres. An important part of our report is analysis of the effect of the extraordinary growth of construction sector activity in recent years. We tell the story of the rise of the construction sector, but also of its bust, more so in the wake of COVID-19. Here we have been able to observe a real time experiment framed to show the impact on jobs of a particular type of economic growth. Alongside the construction story we analyse the opportunities available for professionally qualified workers, that growing group identified in our first report who will surely lead the transformation of the Western Sydney region in the decades to come but who struggle to find appropriate jobs in their home region. We look at this issue in great detail. Finally, we turn our attention to the commuting consequences of the many, varied things that are going on in the Western Sydney economy and its labour force, and we finish the report with some sharp conclusions. Let’s start with a little academic literature. Prosaically, US scholars Susan Hansen and Geraldine Pratt said in 1995 that social and economic geographies are the media through which people find their jobs. Hansen and Pratt examine the forces that segment labour markets across a city. Discrimination on the basis of class, gender and ethnicity, they say, restricts access to good jobs for some while opening up opportunities for others. On the supply side, locations with better transport connections and cultural amenity are revealed as hot spots for employment growth, to the advantage of those able to afford housing in nearby neighbourhoods. Commuting, say Hansen and Pratt, becomes the primary means for crossing the jobs divide. Yet commuting itself is geographically charged. For well-paid professionals with more predictable working hours, a long commute is often managed successfully. Women with child care responsibilities, however, are less likely to have the time for a long commute. Jobs not located on transport corridors, like those in the construction sector or located in edge-of-urban industrial parks, require access to a personal vehicle and an ability to shoulder its running costs. Immobile job-seekers become resigned to local jobs that are often low-paid, casual and zero-hours contracts, or they undertake piece-work from home. A conclusion from the work of Hansen and Pratt is that an economic region is made up of multitude labour market experiences and opportunities, and that these are composed as combinations of very personal circumstances – the home is commonly a key site of struggle for women seeking to take-on paid work – and quite powerful structural forces. As a consequence, it is unwise to make grand summary statements about a region’s labour market conditions or its resident workforce’s capacities and outcomes. In this report, therefore, we explore the circumstances and forces that are generating very diverse outcomes for Western Sydney’s resident workers. This exploration moves deliberately between matters that play out at the wider regional and metropolitan scales and those matters that need attention at finer geographical scales such as at district, neighbourhood, even household levels.