City of Melton: Statistics and Trends Update
As someone working or running a business in the City of Melton you are probably well aware of how rapidly our city is changing.
We can see new residential estates developing across our municipality and we witness development of greenfield sites into industrial estates, and disused factories or warehouses in central locations replaced by large-scale retail and services hubs.
Our city’s population is expected to grow from 179,107 in 2020/21 to an estimated 193,788 in 2022, and then onto around 450,000 by 2050.
Along with this growth comes business opportunities, especially for businesses in high growth suburbs such as Melton South (~ 9% growth 2019-2020) and Rockbank (~29% growth in 2019-2020).
Businesses that have a strong online presence, that have built strong referral networks or created a unique proposition that draws in customers and clients from surrounding or more distant suburbs, are particularly well placed to benefit from these changes.
According to Australian Bureau of Statistics Business Register, there are 11,452 business registered and trading in our municipality.
Data: .id (informed decisions) / ABS – Business register – originally sourced from ATO data
Businesses are included if they are registered with the ATO, with an ABN used within the previous two financial years. Non-employing businesses may include sole traders and registered ABNs which are part of larger enterprises.
When comparing the 2021 data to 2019 we can see an increase in absolute numbers across all business size categories (total growth from 9264 to 11452) and a decline of the non-employing businesses share from 66% to 62%,along with an increase in businesses employing 1-19 employees from 33% to 36.4%.
There were also marginal increases in the numbers of larger organisations, with further increases expected in the 2022/23 data as larger employers establish operations in industrial estates in Ravenhall, Mt Atkinson and Truganina.
Employment and emerging industries
In the City of Melton, there were 82,846 residents employed in the year ending June 2021, working both inside and outside of the City of Melton.
There were 35,123 jobs, including casual/part-time roles, located in the City of Melton (Full-time employed: 27,430 jobs) in the year ending June 2021. This means there were 0.42 local jobs for each member of the local resident working population and as a result there continues to be a high burden on local road infrastructure as residents leave the municipality for work.
Positive signs of local industry growth can be seen in emerging sectors such as manufacturing (3,199 local jobs), wholesale (2,097) and transport, postal and warehousing (2,033).
All of these sectors have increased their share of local jobs within the City of Melton economy in recent years. Overall, the construction sector continues to be the largest employer contributing 5,896, or 16.8% of, local jobs.
Data: .id (informed decisions) / NIEIR
The increase of local jobs from 1259 (2016) to 3199 (2021) in the manufacturing sector, can be broken down into 15 sub sectors, and was mainly driven by food manufacturing (+487 jobs), polymer product and rubber product manufacturing (+240 jobs), non-metallic mineral product manufacturing (+196 jobs), primary metal and metal product manufacturing (+188 jobs), fabricated metal product manufacturing (+248 jobs), and furniture and other manufacturing (+222 jobs).
Other major employment sectors such as retail trade (4873 jobs, 13.9%), education and training (4003 jobs, 11.4%) and health care and social assistance (3248 jobs, 9.2%) have grown in total job numbers but slightly decreased their share of total overall jobs within our local economy.
Confirmed investment in a public hospital, announcements for many new schools and the reopening of the private training and education sector following the COVID-19 pandemic are expected to drive strong jobs growth and economic growth for businesses associated the education and health sectors for many years to come.
Sustained trends in online spending
As our economy continues to emerge from the pandemic it is worth noting that online spending habits, which developed or were accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, seem to be levelling off (Jan 2019-Mar 2019).
Data: Spendmapp by Geografia
With regards to the retail trade and hospitality sector, the Venture Melton team have anecdotal evidence from many businesses that suggest that things are “still not back to normal” which can partly be attributed to the trend towards online spending, in particular for businesses that don’t cater for online ordering and digital transactions.
We have also been hearing from many operators that there is an ongoing staff shortage that is holding them back and we encourage those of you who are in this position to post your vacancies on Melton Jobs Hub.
You can also get in touch with The Exchange, a free local service which matches local talent with local employment opportunities.
Find out more about the City of Melton community and economic profiles at the Council website.