The latest quarterly survey of Australian geoscientist employment, covering the third quarter of 2017 shows that employment prospects for geoscientists have remained unchanged since March 2017, despite anecdotal evidence pointing to an upturn in mining and exploration industry activity.
The national unemployment rate at 30 September 2017 amongst Australia’s professional geoscientists was 12.2%, up slightly from the 30 June figure of 11.3%. Underemployment amongst self-employed geoscientists for the same period, however, fell to 18.0% from 19.0%.
The combined figures point to no improvement in employment prospects for the geoscience professions as a whole since March 2017.
AIG spokesperson, Andrew Waltho, expressed surprise at the flat result in the latest survey. “Australian geoscientists were looking forward to an improvement in the employment situation in the September survey due to what appeared to be improved sentiment amongst professional geoscientists”.
“The survey results, however, don’t contain any good news. Unemployment in the mineral exploration sector continues to sit at around 12%. The surprise in this survey’s results was that unemployment in metalliferous mining geology increased from 5.2% in June to 11.0% at the end of September”.
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