Random Analytica

Here is the last Australian Mining Workforce Planning Scan updated to the 14^th December which is the finalisation of Australian Mining until early 2013.

Figure 1: Australian Mining Workforce Planning Environmental Scan 2012 (Jan-Dec). Data sourced from Australian Mining Newsletter & News Archive. Some stories have been verified against primary resources (i.e. ASX, commercial websites and other news agencies).

With only 10-days of data available (the minimum to calculate a decent trend) Employment and Workplace Health & Safety (WH&S) continued to be the dominant stories in December.

This is the sixth straight month where employment stories have been the leading workforce planning issue but there was an improvement in the percentile of positive stories even though the negative trend continued. In the month of November there were 9 unique employment stories, 5 being negative (297 jobs lost) and 3-positive stories (30 jobs gained).

The further breakdown of Employment stories for July through to December (as per the yellow data line):

• July: 25.9% (61.9% negative, 38.1% positive);
• Aug: 35.4% (71.4% negative, 28.6% positive);
• Sep: 44.8% (76.9% negative, 17.9% positive and 5.2% neutral);
• Oct: 35.8% (83.3% negative, 16.7% positive);
• Nov: 32.9% (72% negative, 28 % positive);
• Dec: 31% (55.6% negative, 33.3% positive and 11.1% neutral).

Here is a closer look at the monthly data breakdowns.

Table 1: Data for Australian Mining Workforce Planning Environmental Scan Dec 2012. Data sourced from Australian Mining Newsletter & News Archive. Some stories have been verified against primary resources (i.e. ASX, commercial websites and other news agencies).

Of note were a slight increase in stories relating to Diversity since November after Professor Marcia Langton raised the issue of an Aboriginal Australia middle class. Diversity stories which averaged just 2.1% over the year rock-bottomed between June and September as commodity prices crashed and mining companies looked for savings across their P&L.

A couple more graphs to close out the year. First of all is a look at the data breakdowns for 2012.

Table 2: Data for Australian Mining Workforce Planning Environmental Scan Jan – Dec 2012. Data sourced from Australian Mining Newsletter & News Archive. Some stories have been verified against primary resources (i.e. ASX, commercial websites and other news agencies).

The year of 2012 was really a story of two halves. Before July it was an industry still with great CAPEX projections, continued FDI growth through to 2014/2015, industrial action, skills shortages and wage pressures. From July the mining sector was dominated by collapsing terms of trade, the high Australian dollar, cost savings and redundancies.

To highlight the transition I’ve added a look at the data in two halves. For me the data for Employment and Recruit/Retain (Recruitment and Retention) sums it up. In the first half of the year the annual Employment stories were at just 29.8% while Recruit/Retain was at 70% of their yearly total. During the last half of the year as unemployment stories surged and recruitment/retention stories declined the figures had reversed reflecting the difficult conditions for mining over the past six months.

Out of interest, here is some baseline data I did for the first Quarter of 2009 (Jan – Mar only). As you can see, although the mining industry collapsed in Oct – Nov 2008 you can already see the largely negative employment stories declining (as stimulus packages were deployed across Australia and China) and by March the WH&S stories returning to longer term normalised levels. Although it would have been interesting to baseline for 2008 and 2009 I just didn’t have the time.

Figure 2: Australian Mining Workforce Planning Environmental Scan 2009 (Jan-Mar). Data sourced from Australian Mining Newsletter & News Archive. Some stories have been verified against primary resources (i.e. ASX, commercial websites and other news agencies).

My last pick of the month for December goes to the Australian Mining story wishing everyone a Merry X-Mas and a Happy New Year. Not only do I wish to share that sentiment with all of you but I received an unsolicited special mention in dispatches for my input to the online magazine during 2012. I very much appreciated the thought. In return I’d like to specifically thank two Australian Mining staff for their support in building this Mining Workforce Planning Scan and Db. They are Andrew Duffy who was a great help on industry specific questions as I had a lot to learn about the industry over the past year and Sharon Amos who greatly assisted me mid-year when my email address was dropped unannounced.

Merry X-Mas to all of you working in or around the mining industry and a Happy New Year.