Australian
InduStory

"Where we've come from, where we are now,
and where we need help"

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Overview

This is a project entry for GovHack 2019. I have attempted to tell a cohesive story about the past & present of Australian industry by homogenising, contextualising & visualising a number of disparate datasets, namely the Sands & McDougal business directory data, TM-Link trademark records data, ABN register data and New business assistance with NEIS data. I hope you like it!

The story

"You have to know the past to understand the present" - Carl Sagan

Australia's growth from settlement to the "lucky" country we enjoy today has been in no small part due to an ever-changing story of economic growth.

In the early days of European settlement, industrial and commercial development was slow. This began to pick up after 1820 when the pastoral industry started to grow, leading to Australia supplying over half of the British market's wool by 1850. This led to growth in manufacturing, and the the gold rush of the 1850s encouraged a rapid expansion of the financial industry. Manufacturing continued to grow in response to increased government efforts in community development towards the end of the 19th century.

The Sands & McDougal business directory data is a fascinating resource of the complexion of Victorian businesses from this time period onward. Its first records appear in 1896, when manufacturing was still the biggest contributor to our country's wealth.

Industry mix of businesses over time

(Victoria, 1896-1975)

This incredible resource brings to life the story of our nation over the 80-odd year period it captures. Manufacturing continued to grow strongly in the early 20th century, as it became a huge supplier during WW2. Although it was quickly surpassed proportionally by a booming retail industry, driven by our strong economy. We can see how services industries experienced steady growth across this time, but especially into the 1970s when oil price rises led to recession and a slowing of traditional industries.

The trend of manufacturing's decline and the service industry's rise continued into the 80s and 90s. During this period, where the Sands & McDougal business directory data coverage concludes, TM-Link trademark records data can help to give context of the type of devleopments industry was working on in this time. Up until the 60s, this data had entirely focussed on consumer & industrial goods trademarks. But around the 70s, there began a rise of trademarks relating to services according to the 'Nice' classification.

Industry mix of services trademarks over time

(Australia, 1970-1999)

This data shows a decline in financial, construction & transport services developments over this time. Meanwhile, the education and media industries saw significant leaps forward, as Australia embraced the growth of the information age. Administrative & support services also grew substantially during this period.

This brings us up to where we are now.

Current industry mix according to ABN register

(Australia, 2016)

Today, Australia is dominated by its services sector, making up almost 80% of our workforce. This is evident in the ABN register data, showing areas like finance, professional services & real estate as very strong. Some of these areas show significant growth since the end of the business directory dataset in 1975. While manufacturing is still a strong industry, its strength is consolidated in a relatively smaller number of larger companies, hence being a smaller proportion on the ABN register and a major decrease since the end of the business directory dataset. Retail has similarly fallen dramatically.

The Australian government predicts that the biggest jobs growth in the next 5 years will be in the areas of Health care & social assistance, Construction, Education & training and Professional, scientific & technical services. How well-placed are we looking for growth in these areas?

The New business assistance with NEIS data shows us how many emerging businesses we're seeing in these industries. This gives us indicators about how well-placed we'll be in future years to meet economic demands on our different markets, and how mature we can expect the workforce to be in these areas.

Industries of today's businesses according to ABN register v.s. NEIS enrollments

(compared proportionally, excluding "Other")

This data shows a significant gap between the current industrial mix of businesses and those on the rise - and that's not necessarily a bad thing. We see strong interest from new businesses in growth areas such as professional, scientific & technical services, as well as in stalwarts such as manufacturing. It's reassuring an appropriate focus on the other growth areas of health care & social assistance as well as education & training. However there does appear to be hints of a significant shortfall in construction. It is a surprise to see dramatically few businesses launching into the financial & insurance space considering the current strength of that industry.

Thank you for your attention and interest in this project. I hope you've found it both informative & interesting!

Data sources

Data details & notes

Some various detailed notes about how this data was used:

  • The business history only covers Victoria, whereas other data was Australia-wide. Unfortunately no equivalent national data was available, and I used it under the assumption that the Victorian data was regardless representative of Australian data when taken as percentages.
  • Extremely minor groupings (<13 businesses) were removed from 2016 ABN register data. These were "government admin & defence" (2), "personal & other services" (2) and "multi-role organisation" (12). Also removed blanks (497).
  • The "current" ABN register data was as at end of FY2016, whereas NEIS data covered 2015-2019.
  • The NEIS data did some combining of industries which have low representation with "Other Services" to form a single "Other" category. I have done the same for the ABN register data with mining, "electricity, gas, water & waste" and "public administration & safety", all of which were <1%. In the ABN register data, I combined forestry & fishing into agirculture, as the NEIS data also did.
  • TM-Link 'Nice' classifications were transformed to Australia's standard industry codes by mapping the official definitions across, manually. I was surprised to found a very clear, near 1:1 mappping.