The Jobs Challenge of the South

The underlying premise of 'A Metropolis of Three Cities' is that Greater Sydney has evolved into a metropolis with uneven access to jobs, facilities and services. Simply put, existing and new jobs are located in the east and most of the city’s population growth is in the west. Without intervention, residents in the west will be faced with ever increasing commute times to access higher value jobs in the east.

A Metropolis of Three Cities proposes intervention to grow 200,000 additional jobs in the WPCA.

There is a significant agglomeration of jobs around the Harbour CBD located on the eastern edge of Greater Sydney. This agglomeration of 500,000 jobs is supported by the existing radial rail network, finer grain bus network and light rail routes that serves this CBD well. This concentration of economic activity, including office precincts, universities and biotech clusters, has spread over the past 30 years along the Eastern and Northern Economic Corridors, but not south.

A Metropolis of Three Cities does not recognise or address the job opportunity, south of Sydney Airport, including the South District LGAs. In 2019 the GSC released its report card on the implementation of 'A Metropolis of Three Cities', The Pulse of Greater Sydney 2018-2019 (The Pulse). The Pulse acknowledges that job growth in Sydney has been uneven and patchy and that this is creating an unbalanced and inequitable city:

Between 2006 and 2016, Greater Sydney’s total workforce increased from 1.6 million to 2.1 million. A further increase of 817,000 jobs is projected by 2036. However, this jobs growth has been uneven across the Region.⁴

Greater Sydney and district job distribution and type 2016⁵

Job containment by district 2016 ((percentage of people who live and work within the same district; the arrows show intensity of movement between districts)⁶

The Pulse data highlights that southern Sydney, including the South District has a job problem and suffers from a ‘brain drain’, with highly educated and highly skilled workers leaving the south for work primarily in the job-rich Harbour CBD.

The South District has the lowest number of jobs (only 10% of Greater Sydney’s total), and the lowest level of jobs containment (the percentage of people who live and work in the same districts) at only 43%. Most of the 480,000 strong local workforce leave the south for work each day, even though there are 350,000 local jobs.

While the number of jobs in the South District is lower than all the other districts, this is not just quantitative, but also a qualitative deficit, with the South District having the lowest percentage of knowledge jobs of all districts in the metropolitan area. The low number of knowledge jobs has an impact on job containment rates with more residents of the South District leaving the district every day to attend work.

In addition to the importance of knowledge jobs for the South District to match the worker profile and increase job containment, knowledge jobs as higher value jobs will also increase local prosperity.

⁴ Greater Sydney Commission, The Pulse of Greater Sydney, p.11 ⁵ The Pulse of Greater Sydney, p.12 ⁶ The Pulse of Greater Sydney, p.11

Percentage of dwellings located within 30 minutes of a metropolitan centre or cluster⁷

Percentage of dwellings located within 30 minutes of a metropolitan centre or strategic centre ⁸ This lack of opportunity south of the airport means the population must commute long distances to seek high quality job opportunities. A mere 24% of dwellings in the South District are within 30 minutes by public transport to a metropolitan centre where high value knowledge jobs are located. This is the lowest level of all the districts by a significant margin, as demonstrated by this graph.

Access to jobs appears to improve when access to a strategic centre is included. 98% of dwellings are located within 30 minutes by public transport to a strategic centre. Thus, it is critical to focus on improving public transport accessibility to, and through, the corridor and growing knowledge jobs in strategic centres.

The obvious and strong conclusion is that there are not enough high value knowledge jobs in strategic centres to provide the opportunities for the population when compared with other residents of Greater Sydney.

While 78 per cent of residents of the Eastern City District live and work within their district (referred to as job containment), this compares with 60 per cent in North District, 57 per cent in Western City District, 52 per cent in Central City District and only 43 per cent in South District...

Part of this need to travel is because 38 per cent of the 2.1 million jobs in Greater Sydney in 2016 were in the Eastern City District. As shown in Figure 4, the North District contained 19 per cent of the Region’s jobs; Central City District 18 per cent; Western City District 15 per cent and the South District 10 per cent.⁹

Work undertaken by the Committee for Sydney has demonstrated that the density of higher value knowledge jobs decreases south of Sydney Airport, as agglomerations of knowledge jobs have begun to form in, and around, key centres in Western Sydney.

Access to knowledge jobs ¹⁰

⁷ The Pulse of Greater Sydney, p.16 ⁸ The Pulse of Greater Sydney, p.18 ⁹ The Pulse of Greater Sydney, p.12 ¹⁰ Adding to the Dividend, Ending the Divide, Committee for Sydney, p. 13 Image: TJ's Coffee House, Penshurst