Employment Self Sufficiency

Good Policy or Pipe Dream

Three Parts

1. Commuting to work – problem definition

2. Using employment terms correctly

3. Responsibilities for delivering jobs

1. Commuting to Work

Commuting for Work

Show of hands

Average about 28 mins

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International Situation

US average about 28 mins

OECD average 37 mins

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The Tipping Point

Travel times don’t increase indefinitely

Most cities are around 30 mins

Why don’t they just keep increasing?

Like most things, its about economics

Our urban structure

Has the residents on the outside and the jobs on the

inside

Has the ‘high quality’ jobs in a handful of places

(greater CBD, airport, universities, Henderson)

Is putting job-enabling infrastructure in these places

– reinforcing the status quo

Strategies

Bring the jobs to the people

More employment

infrastructure to new

activity centres on the

fringe

Bring the people to the Jobs

Increased infill in the

central sub-region

Increased public transport

infrastructure

Bring the Jobs to the People

D2031 advocates this approach, but some questions

arise:

How many jobs?

What types of jobs?

What infrastructure do these jobs require?

Who is responsible for providing the infrastructure?

In NW corridor between 2006 and

2011:New population 43,868

New workforce 24,127

New Jobs 14,100Joondalup AC – 2,590

Wangara AC – 4,236

Jobs gap 10,000

ESS went from 42% to 43% (target 60%)

2. Using Employment Terms

Correctly

Employment Self Sufficiency

Sub-regional measure

Appropriate for allocating employment on large scale

Employment Self Containment

Goodness of fit between local jobs and local labour

force

What we are actually trying to achieve is increased

ESC

ESS and ESC – The Relationship

ESC is strongly

correlated with ESS

An increase in ESS

does not imply an

increase in ESC, and

vice versa

Because ESC is sticky

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

ESS ESC

Wanneroo

2006

2011

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

ESS ESC

Kalamunda

2006

2011

Application of ESS Targets

625% 8.04

%

7.58

%

3. Responsibilities for delivering jobs

State government should

Set employment targets for different centre types

Balance targets to achieve sub-regional ESS

Coordinate job-creating BIG infrastructure, involving

Commonwealth

Local government should

Address employment directly in commercial

strategies

Prioritise development of high-potential employment

centres

Address local access issues

4. What developers should do

about employment

Say yes to

Maximising centre-based retail/consumer service

employment

Understand the maturity of your centre

Endorsed employment number targets for each

centre type

Local employment infrastructure issues being taken

into account

Say no to

Inappropriate use of regional terms and metrics to

individual centres

Excessive, unachievable employment expectations

on shopping centres

Final Thought

Contrary to popular belief, the economy does not

exist to provide jobs

The economy exists to create and distribute goods

and services

The chances of individual activity centre owners

being able to provide jobs on the fringe beyond retail

and other basic population driven activity are

virtually nil