Some jobs come and go as technology changes, while other jobs are always around in some form. Here, we shall explore which jobs are linked to population, and which ones aren’t.

We do this by combining two relatively simple datasets. Quarterly population counts and quarterly employment by occupation counts.

We then divide the total population by the number of workers in a specific occupation and see how these numbers have been changing over time.

Let’s start with Australia’s most common job, sales assistants.

Currently 565,000 people in Australia hold basic sales jobs in our supermarkets, hardware stores, or food outlets. The number of sales assistants has almost doubled since the mid-80s when data collection started. The job to population ratio stayed remarkably similar throughout the decades.

For every 48 Australians we need to add one sales assistant to the workforce. Neither the advent of online shopping nor economic ups and downs impacted the population to jobs ratio significantly. If a growth suburb on the urban fringe doubles in size, it must attract roughly twice as many sales assistants.

The importance of nurses in the healthcare system is obvious and the skills shortage in the sector is infamous. From the 1980s to the advent of the mining boom in 2008, each nurse tended to be responsible for 121 Australians.

Today, each nurse cares for 77 Aussies. Medical coverage has improved. Since we still experience overworked nurses and understaffed clinics, we must think of technological advances to make nurses’ lives easier. I am not talking about having robots flipping over patients in hospital or anything outrageous.

Rather I want nurses to have access to apps that minimise the paperwork they do on a daily basis. In hospitals I still see nurses carry medicines and materials from A to B. That’s an unacceptable waste of their time. We are talking about highly skilled workers here.

You’ve seen those friendly robots carrying trays in restaurants, right?

Hospitals, at least all the newly built ones, should ensure that an army of such robots carries pills, syringes, and food around.

Obviously, there would be a lock on these things so that no one can steal the medicines. No need to have highly skilled nurses do tasks they are much too qualified for. Let’s better utilise our nursing workforce by ensuring they spend a smaller share of their time on compliance, reporting and carrying, and more time with patients.

The employment of truck drivers has been remarkably stable. For every 131 Australians we need one truckie. That ratio hasn’t changed for four decades.

Since we know Australia will grow by around 3.7 million people in the coming decade, we somehow need to find over 28,000 net new truckies. That’s quite the challenge since I don’t foresee self-driving trucks to have an impact in the coming decade.

We don’t see enough young Australians going into trucking to come even remotely close to filling that gap. Since we can’t go without trucks in the current setup of our country, we will simply import these workers from overseas.

We could theoretically invest heavily into rail transport for parts of a container’s journey. Since a typical freight train hauls around 200 20ft containers, we could expect 65 B-double trucks to be taken off the road. Will this happen or will Australia simply import truck drivers from overseas?

I think Australia will choose the easy option of migration rather than tackle deep traffic infrastructure challenges but I am happy to be proven wrong.

Commercial cleaners are needed in businesses large and small to keep offices and workshops in workable conditions. In 1988 we recorded one commercial cleaner for every 113 Australians, whereas today each cleaner covers 198 Australians.

The total number of commercial cleaners in 1988 and 2023 is the same at 146,000. We can’t go without these workers; we shouldn’t lower standards of cleanliness either. Investing into technology (like commercial versions of your friendly automated vacuum cleaner at home) will be the norm in Australian offices and workshops very soon.

Such technology won’t do away with the need for commercial cleaners, but it ensures clean workplaces while relying on a smaller cleaning workforce.

In many jobs the employment to population ratio changed due to technological changes. We need fewer keyboard operators (148 to 669), telemarketers (1,458 to 4,999), and bank workers (179 to 566) today than we did 30 years ago in 1993. Technology has that effect and soon more white-collar jobs will see the same trend.

A surprisingly stable job to population ratio is recorded for ministers of religion. Despite shrinking numbers of believers and plummeting church attendance, there is one minister of religion for every 1,400 or so Australians – they just manage smaller flocks on average.

Demographer Simon Kuestenmacher is a co-founder of The Demographics Group. His columns, media commentary and public speaking focus on current socio-demographic trends and how these impact Australia. His latest book aims to awaken the love of maps and data in young readers. Follow Simon on Twitter (X), Facebook or LinkedIn for daily data insights in short format.