A Fall In Demand For Mining And Petroleum Engineers

This month has seen the jobs market in Australia witness contrasting figures with an unexpected decline in unemployment with an injection of jobs late in 2014.

Although, that was the case in Western Australia, the number of Mining and Petroleum engineers facing redundancy is climbing. Also taking a hit is the Coal Sector, with both showing that huge numbers are facing the prospect of being without work in 2015.

Figures announced through the Job Index identifies that the demand has fallen by 70 per cent for mining and petroleum engineers and for the Coal Sector this has fallen by 40 per cent. The job index shows that these figures will continue to fall. In Western Australia, this announcement has meant that in 11 years this is the highest rate of unemployment for the state.

Robert van Stokrom, chief executive of DFP Recruitment Services said, “The broad fall in the price of our major exports and now crude oil has devastated demand.”

With the cost of iron and oil falling by almost half, some are predicting that this will result in a fall in commodity prices.

In Western Australia there will be 800 contractors set to be made redundant who are part of the Chevron’s $66 billion Gorgon LNG project, just off the Pilbara coast. A key reason for the loss of work for these contractors are that the projects will be transitioning from development to production phase. In Queensland, 150 contractors were made redundant from the Curtis LNG project.

“Although the economy is still creating jobs, it is not creating enough net new jobs to absorb all of the new entrants to the labour force.” These are the words of Saul Eslake, chief economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Eslake had predicted that the peak in Australian unemployment would have occurred later in 2015 or into 2016 sitting between 6.5 and 6.75 per cent.