The average transport worker is getting older and more educated, and also working fewer total hours
The Bureau of Transport, Infrastructure and Regional Economics (BITRE) has compiled a comprehensive profile of workers in the transport, postal and warehousing industry, based on data from the national census collected in 2006 and 2011.
Released this week, it shows the average transport worker is older than staff across all other industries, and getting older.
Over the five years between census dates, the proportion of transport workers aged more than 54 grew by 3.5 percentage points to 18 per cent of the total workforce.
There was also a slight increase in the proportion of workers aged 45 to 54, up to 27 per cent.
With almost half of the industry aged more than 45, BITRE says this is one of the most important policy areas for its leadership.
“The ageing of the workforce is regarded as one of the major challenges facing the transport and logistics industry,” the profile points out.
“This has led to a number of initiatives relating to succession planning, mature worker retention, recruitment and vocational training.”
Other data points are converging, slowly, toward those of the general population.
The profile notes that transport workers will typically have less formal education than those in other parts of the economy.
While in 2006, 9.2 per cent of them held a Bachelor’s degree, that figure rose to 12 per cent by 2011.
Employment of post-graduate certificate holders grew rapidly over the five years, an average of 11 per cent per year (from a low base) to 3.2 per cent by 2011.
A further 31.9 per cent of transport workers hold post-school certificate level or diploma qualifications.
Transport workers earn average wages slightly higher than those of the general working population, $1,146 per week (gross) compared with $1,093.
However that doesn’t necessarily mean they are doing better when it comes to hourly rates.
BITRE says the transport sector has a higher-than-usual rate of full-time employment (78 per cent compared to 68 per cent across the general population) and also sees workers (particularly transport drivers) taking on longer hours in return for higher overall pay.
“A relatively large proportion of transport, postal and warehousing employees report working 49 or more hours per week (27 per cent compared to 18 per cent of employed persons nationally),” the profile says, but adds that the fact that both rates had fallen since 2006 is significant.
BITRE says the workforce profile and statistics provide a useful starting point for researchers and policy developers looking to get the most out of the industry. It has urged further investigation into some key areas by fellow stakeholders.
“This study could potentially be built upon with additional research that delves more deeply into the policy implications of key issues such as ageing and [the] changing skill needs in the transport, postal and warehousing industry,” it says.