THE NTE IN AUSTRALIA

Core NTE businesses play an important part in Australia’s enviable lifestyle culture. They make a strong and growing contribution towards Australia’s economy in the jobs they provide, and the sales turnover generated.

In June 2021, Australia’s Core NTE comprised 123,316 establishments. Most of these businesses belong to the Food sub-sector (63%), followed by Entertainment (30%) and Drink (7%). The distribution across these three sub-sectors has continued a trend towards more Food and Entertainment and fewer Drink establishments. This trend has been driven increases in Sports and Physical Recreation Activities and Creative and Performing Arts Activities businesses.

Despite the ongoing pandemic challenges, the Australian Core NTE gained 9,590 establishments in 2020/21 (+8%) – the strongest growth since records began (Figure 3). Most of this growth was in the Food sub-sector (+10%), driven by the addition of 6,147 businesses in Australia’s Cafes and Restaurants industry (+14%). The Entertainment (+7%) and Drink (+5%) sub-sectors also gained new businesses.

After a fall of -9% between 2018/19 and 2019/20, Australia’s Core NTE sales turnover rose 4%, growing from $127.6bn in 2019/20 to $133.2bn in the 2020/21 financial year. Sales turnover remained $6.2bn below the 2019/20 pre-pandemic baseline, demonstrating that recovery was still incomplete.

Similarly, after a fall of -20% between June 2019 and June 2020, employment as of June 2021 had rebounded by 18%. This, however, was -7% below the pre-pandemic June 2019 baseline - equating to 72,655 fewer jobs in the sector - as visualised by the red line in Figure 3. The industry with the greatest number of job losses was Takeaway Food Services, which had 42,375 fewer employees in June 2021 than it did in June 2019.

Measure

Establishments Core NTE 20/21 & Change from 19/20

123,316

+8.4%

% Total Economy

5.1%

Employment

1,051,650

+17.5% 8.0%

Sales Turnover

$133.2bn

+4.4% 3.3%

Figure 2: Indexed % change (2011 = 1.0) in Core NTE metrics

Figure 3: Year on year establishment change 2011 to 2021