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Tourism bounces back with record job creation and a booming Easter

Queensland’s tourism sector has bounced back by generating an extra 37,000 jobs in the past year, but some of the state’s most important industries were still struggling to recover from job shedding, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Apr 21, 2022, updated Apr 21, 2022
The tourism sector has had a spectacular recovery

The tourism sector has had a spectacular recovery

The sector now has 215,000 jobs in Queensland, a record for the industry and an improvement of 27,000 on pre-Covid levels. More than half the jobs were part time.

While the sector’s total number of jobs ranked well below industries like healthcare it was a crucial one for Queensland because many of the jobs were in the regions and catered for young and part time workers.

But it was healthcare where the big gains were made. Another 60,000 jobs were created in the sector in the year to February. Education and training also provided another 42,000.

Several industries have gone backwards in the past year, notably retail which has lost 31,000 jobs. Much of that would have been because of restrictions and lockdowns as well as the shift to online.

Agriculture was also down heavily (-16,000), as was mining (-3000), wholesale trade (-28,000) and finance (-17,000).

Greater Brisbane grabbed the lion’s share of jobs in the past year in Queensland. Jobs in the city were up 74,000. The Sunshine Coast benefitted from another 12,000 jobs, Townsville 11,000 and the Gold Coast 16,000. Cairns employment jumped by 8000.

But while tourism has bounced back, it now has the perverse problem of up to 5000 unfilled jobs, about 1000 of which were for chefs or cooks.

Queensland Tourism Industry Council chief executive Daniel Gschwind said the tourism sector’s recovery had been spectacular.

He said there was a sense of optimism in tourism and the Easter break had been a turning point with many providers saying their occupancy levels were above pre-Covid levels.

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Gschwind said a factor in that was that people were still not prepared to travel overseas so were holidaying domestically.

 

 

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