Anticipating future skills: Jobs growth and alternative futures for Queensland to 2022

Jobs Queensland has been tasked by the Queensland Government to undertake research and provide advice on future skills needs. The Anticipating Future Skills project, which entails the economic modelling of future scenarios, is one of the ways in which Jobs Queensland is performing this work. The scenarios used in this project were devised after a series of workshops with Jobs Queensland stakeholders across the state and cover the following themes: (1) Technological change: increasing labour productivity of all industries in Queensland so that the productivity of each is 0.25 per cent higher than the baseline annually between 2017-18 and 2021-22; (2) Changing workforce: increasing interstate migration with a decreasing proportion of working-age population; (3) External impact: halving the price of coal and iron ore. A baseline scenario to 2022 was also produced, based on 2017 labour market, population and economic data, and the Queensland Government’s 2017-18 Budget Papers. This report is intended to present an overview of the Anticipating Future Skills project and high-level modelling results. The data presented represents only a portion of the modelling that has been undertaken for this project. Summaries for each region and industry are published at the back of this document.