From online personal trainers to bakers and farmhands: The jobs to thrive in the post-pandemic world - and why your favourite cafe could be gone before you're back in the office
- Bestselling author Robert Kiyosaki said tech entrepreneurs were likely to thrive
- Demographer Mark McCrindle predicted demand would rise for home services
- This meant food ordering apps, online gyms, virtual meetings would be popular
- Suburban bakeries also set have more customers as city centre cafes closed
- Here’s how to help people impacted by Covid-19
Online personal trainers, tradies and even suburban bakers are set to thrive as coronavirus radically changes Australian workplaces.
City centre cafes are expected to close in droves when $1,500 a fortnight JobSeeker wage subsidies run out in September.
A surge in the number of Australians working from home is also set to spur demand for technological innovations, from food home delivery apps to IT support.
Online entrepreneurs
Bestselling American finance author Robert Kiyosaki, best known for his 1997 book Rich Dad Poor Dad, said tech entrepreneurs were best placed to survive a 1930s-style global depression.
'The most powerful tool ever created for an entrepreneur is that iPhone,' he told Daily Mail Australia from Phoenix, Arizona.
Online personal trainers, tradies and even suburban bakers are set to thrive as coronavirus radically changes Australian workplaces. Pictured is Sam Wood making a fitness video from home
Bestselling American finance author Robert Kiyosaki (pictured with his wife Kim Kiyosaki), best known for his 1997 book Rich Dad Poor Dad, said tech entrepreneurs were best placed to survive a 1930s-style global depression
'That iPhone, you can connect to the world anywhere: you can market Aussie to the world today.
'If I had that 50 years ago, I would be a richer man - there's more opportunity today.'
Online fitness
Demographer Mark McCrindle said while Australia's jobs market was likely to remain soft for some years, technological innovations were a growth area, from online personal trainers to virtual workplace meetings.
'The opportunities there are in areas that we used to solve by going to a place, now can solve through technology,' he told Daily Mail Australia.
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'That's everything from meetings scheduling to time tracking through to gyms, those that have moved to an online environment.'
Food delivery apps
With more people working from home, demand is set to increase for food delivery, which will mean more work for designing website apps for takeaway businesses.
'The delivery services have taken off, so anyone who has been able to specialise in home delivery and takeaway,' Mr McCrindle said.
'As the restrictions lift those who can offer services for people who don't want to head out for various reasons, will do well.
With more people working from home, demand is set to increase for food delivery, which will mean more work for designing website apps for takeaway businesses. Pictured are food delivery riders near Sydney's World Square
'Delivery and personal services has seen a big boom.'
Farmhands
University of Sydney Business School Professor John Buchanan said the closure of Australia's borders would create jobs for farmhands and even managers, traditionally done by migrant guest workers and backpackers.
'Farmhands aren't just labourers, they've got to be quite good with advanced machinery, they've got to be able to work with computer-based systems,' he told Daily Mail Australia.
'There's going to be issues with changes in migration policy so that's going to change demand in those sectors that traditionally relied on migrant labour.'
City cafe closures
Cafes in the centre of Australia's big capital cities were expected to close from September 27 as $1,500 fortnightly wage subsidies dried up.
University of Sydney Business School Professor John Buchanan said the closure of Australia's borders would create jobs for farmhands and even managers, traditionally done by migrant guest workers and backpackers
'A lot of employees across the board who are being sustained by that will find that the job will not be not be feasible when it's funded by the employer,' Mr McCrindle said.
'If we think about our CBDs, even when we do come back at the end of this year, they're probably going to be running at least 10 per cent fewer staff, maybe 20 per cent.
'If you've got one-fifth of more of the foot traffic that normally would be there not there, that's going to massively impact on those eateries and cafes.'
Fellow demographer Bernard Salt is expecting the proportion of Australians permanently working from home to more than double from five per cent before COVID-19 to at least 10 per cent as the coronavirus restrictions were unwound.
He estimated one in three white collar professionals had worked from home during the pandemic, in his Weekend Australian Magazine column.
With more Australians working from home, suburban bakeries are set to thrive.
With more Australians working from home, suburban bakeries are set to thrive. Pictured are ten people sitting outside a cafe at Kirribilli on Sydney's lower north shore on May 16, 2020
'They will be going well. In fact, they are doing well because people have been scattered back to where they live - where we live is also where we buy,' Mr McCrindle said.
Tradies
Australians working from home are also expected to hire carpenters and plasterers to remodel their houses to accommodate new domestic offices.
'They're having to get those things fixed and retro-fit the house that's suitable for a work-from-home environment - some of the DIY projects people have been engaging in, they've now needed some professionals or some tradies to come in and fix that up,' Mr McCrindle said.
Cleaners
Office cleaners would be also needed, even when a smaller number of white collar professionals returned to city centre offices in coming months.
'Suddenly cleaning is back on in a big way: as organisations do move back into the workplace, daily cleaning and deep cleaning where there's been the fear of infection is essential,' Mr McCrindle said.
The labour market
Australia's labour market is expected to remain weak for some years, with the Reserve Bank and Treasury both expecting the unemployment rate to hit 10 per cent by June, a level unseen since early 1994, as the economy sunk into a recession for the first time in almost three decades.
Australians working from home are also expected to hire carpenters and plasterers to remodel their houses to accommodate new domestic offices. Pictured is Gold Coast plasterer Surya Kastelein
National Australia Bank, the nation's biggest business lender, is even more downbeat, forecasting an 11.7 per cent jobless rate, which would the highest since the 1930s Great Depression.
Professor Buchanan said the level of underemployment was likely to be double the official unemployment rate for years to come.
'Underemployment is the big story,' he said.
'Before the downturn it was sitting at 15 per cent, it's now gone up to about 20 per cent and I would predict the ratio of unemployed to underemployed would be roughly two to one.'
Australia's jobless rate climbed from 5.2 per cent in March to a five-year high of 6.2 per cent in April, as COVID-19 shutdowns saw 104,500 become officially unemployed as 489,800 people left the labour market in despair.
Underemployment soared by 4.9 percentage points to record 13.7 per cent.
Mr McCrindle said Millennials, often stereotyped as fickle, would be more likely to value job security over career excitement, as the Depression did to the young almost 90 years ago.
'We're going to see the Millennials change a lot: cut down on their entertainment budget and also start to save,' he said.
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