Some of the biggest employment stories over the past 12 months followed on from the stage set in 2013.
Queensland coal was one of the hardest hit and the workforce reduction through Western Australia’s iron ore sector also picked up speed.
“Coal is now in its 30th month of publically announced declines and iron ore is beginning the same story,” workforce planning specialist Shane Granger told MiningNews.net.
“The really interesting point about iron ore jobs is that the producers have been able to cut quietly or defer cuts a lot longer than I would have thought and only now are we hearing about the larger cuts.”
In terms of the wider country, South Australia’s contribution was modest this year and the Northern Territory joined most other states in providing more bad news than good.
Elsewhere, Tasmania was a bright spot and managed to increase its level of mining employment.
Those numbers were modest compared to the rest of the country however, with new weakness in Western Australia adding to the gloom in other parts of the nation.
WA joins the pack
The WA employment story is all about iron ore and to a lesser extent gold.
On both of these fronts it wasn’t good news throughout 2014, with soft market conditions keeping a lid on job creation in the Goldfields.
Silver Lake Resources outlined a number of reductions early in the year, with the move into care and maintenance at the Murchison mine resulting in the loss of 127 jobs.
The mothballing of the company’s Lakewood mill also cut a number of employee and contractor positions and put further pressure on the region’s mining workforce.
In iron ore, some forecasts in July tipped BHP to cut more than 3000 positions.
While there’s certainly been some downsizing, the majors and minors both managed to show some resilience.
“Iron ore had a patchy decline but I believe that 2015 will be a steady decline very similar to the long term declines in coal employment in Queensland and New South Wales,” Granger said.
Many of the headline losses in iron ore came later in the year as the spot price started to collapse, with Atlas Iron and BC Iron both making substantial reductions.
Those added to the downsizing throughout BHP and Rio Tinto operations, with productivity remaining high on the agenda as production continued to expand.
Peak jobs?
While it’s difficult to forecast anything in the mining game with much certainty, Granger believes the job losses this year are part of a broader trend that will continue in the years to come.
With automation continuing to expand its presence, especially in iron ore, the structural changes underway at the moment could bring a permanent reduction in workers.
“Mining jobs are constantly created and lost but the attrition that occurred this year has seen the official ABS numbers drop from a record high in May 2012 of 275,500 to the current figure of 237,400,” he said.
“Automation is now embedded and will start to bite, especially in iron ore, and the conflation of construction versus mining jobs will lessen as the infrastructure phase winds down much quicker than most predicted.
“Look for a sub 200K figure in the mining employment next year and there is little likelihood that we will ever see 275,500 miners in this country again.”
On that outlook Granger declared skills shortages a thing of the past, but mining-focused recruiters continue to report gaps in some key areas.
Engineers and a number of niche specialists continue to be in demand and a survey released by Manpower earlier this year showed mining and construction firms had cautiously optimistic hiring plans in 2014.
It’s definitely been a mixed picture, but there’s no doubt employment moved backwards for the broader industry during 2014.
As we move into 2015, it looks likely this weakness will continue.
