Which Future Jobs Are Going Where, and Why?

In urban development, there’s been one immutable force that shapes markets—from housing to commercial to retail and social infrastructure—and that is jobs.

Understanding what’s driving the locational behaviour of jobs in today’s economy, and how the industries of the future will change the patterns of job location, are essential to successful urban planning and development.

That’s why this year’s Future of Suburbia event is focusing on jobs: where they are, where they’re likely to be going in the future, and the forces that will reshape the employment landscape—and property markets with it.

The half-day conference will be headlined by global head of research for Indeed.com (the world’s biggest job site), San Francisco-based Jed Kolko.

Jed’s work on the patterns of millennial job search behaviour and big data insights into employer recruitment patterns in the USA has earned him widespread praise.

The world-renowned urbanist Richard Florida (author of massively influential urban planning trope The Rise of the Creative Class and whose latest book The New Urban Crisis warns of urban inequality) has analysed Jed’s work, concluding that “it turns out that workers do best in smaller metros” because lower living costs more than make up for lower salaries.

This, Florida argues, points to a shifting balance between the pulling power of the larger mega cities and the appeal of suburban job centres and smaller metros:

And William Frey, senior fellow of the Metropolitan Policy Program at the prestigious Brookings Institute has reached similar conclusions.

“As we approach the end of the 2010s, the biggest cities in the United States are experiencing slower growth or population losses, according to new census estimates,” Frey says.

“The combination of city growth declines and higher suburban growth suggests that the “back to the city” trend seen at the beginning of the decade has reversed.”

Will high costs of living and rising congestion similarly create new opportunities for middle ring and outer suburban areas in south east Queensland?

It seems inevitable that suburban job growth will outpace growth in the inner city: health and education will be the two fastest growing industries into the future, and neither are city-centric.

They are going to need suburban locations to support their operations but what are the factors that will see some centres win while others don’t?

And what about professional services? Three out of four professional and scientific jobs are located outside the inner city and this is predicted to continue. What’s going to attract professional service firms to some suburban business centres rather than others?

And what will this mean for urban management, city planning and property development opportunities into the future?

Helping explore this theme with Jed are a host of experts: Peter Seamer AO (former CEO of the Victorian Planning Authority and author of Breaking Point: the Future of Australian Cities); Kate Meyrick (CEO of The Hornery Institute); Taku Hashimoto (senior development manager, Sekisui House); Kerrianne Muelman (managing director, Urban Economics); Russell Luhrs (Springfield City Group) and more.

The conference will be opened by Brisbane Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner who recently announced a “Better Suburbs Initiative” to support suburban centre development into the future.

This event will appeal to developers, urban planners, designers, transport planners, infrastructure experts, local, state and federal officials active in cities policy, and anyone with an interest in understanding how the forces that shaped metropolitan development in the past won’t be the same as those which will shape it into the future.

For further information click here.

The Urban Developer is proud to partner with The Suburban Alliance to deliver this article to you. In doing so, we can continue to publish our free daily news, information, insights and opinion to you, our valued readers.