Mines may be out of sight for most of us, but they’re having a direct impact on all our lives.
Well that’s the take out from new figures showing the Queensland resources sector delivered $62.9B to the State’s economy in 2017-18. Up 14% on the previous year.
Queensland Minerals Council summed it up “Brisbane is still the biggest mining town in Queensland supporting 142,447 jobs and contributing $28.9 billion-up 12% on year before-to the State.”
Apart from the size, this is nothing new of course. Australian cities and country have been doing well out of mining for some time, it’s just that no-one has really noticed.
Well a Deloitte report at the end of last year did-and this is where I get a little statisticky, so excuse me.
They found the mining and mining equipment, technology and services (METS) sectors contributed $236.8B in 2015-16. That’s 15% of Australia’s Gross Domestic Product.
Their impact on jobs was just as impressive. Both sectors support 1.1M jobs nationwide–around 10% of overall employment-creating more than 220,000 high-skill, high-wage jobs. 65% of those are in regional Australia.
Resources exports account for more than half of the nation’s total export earnings. A significant contributor to the Government’s coffers, too, with the industry paying $12 billion a year in taxes and royalties.
The same Deloitte snapshot also found that the last mining boom back in 2013 led to a permanent increase in living standards of around 13% and lowered the unemployment rate by around 1.25 percentage points.
None of this is copper specific, but when you realise copper accounted for a whopping 17% of South Australia’s exports last year-it is the country’s biggest producer-you start to get the picture.
I’ll get off my box now.