While the jobs boom is not restricted to the Sunshine Coast it certainly has seen a remarkable growth in employment. Economist Gene Tunny said it was likely to be related to the huge development occurring at the Maroochydore central business district as well as the surge in interstate migration.

The Maroochydore City Centre is expected to create about 15,000 jobs during construction.

Internet job vacancies for the coast were up 121 per cent on pre-Covid levels, according to the National Skills Commission report on internet job vacancies.

According to the report for November, labourers were in big demand throughout Queensland, as were community and service workers, machinery operators and sales workers.

Nationally, there were 252,300 job vacancies in November and the biggest growth was lower skilled areas, which the report said was likely to have been caused by companies re-engaging workers after the lockdowns.

The change since Covid for Queensland was a 57 per cent increase in the internet vacancy index. That was based on an extra 17,600 job ads compared with pre-Covid times or a total of 48,600 job vacancies.

There were an extra 11,200 vacancies in Brisbane, or 29,300 vacancies in total. Central Queensland had 3400 vacancies, far north Queensland had 6100, the Gold Coast 6400, the Sunshine Coast 3500 and Toowoomba and south west Queensland 2300.

Jobs advertisement levels increased across all states and territories and the strongest state-wide gain was in Tasmania at 78 per cent, although this off a low base and led to only 3100 job vacancies.

Separate data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics also showed an increase in jobs in the minerals and exploration sectors.

Resources Minister Scott Stewart said the latest Labour Force data showed the four-quarter average of Queensland jobs in exploration has increased by nearly 70 per cent in 2021 to over 22,600.

“Jobs in the minerals mining and quarrying industries in Queensland have also reached a record four-quarter average of more than 24,100 – up a massive 28.4 per cent year-on-year,” he said.

“The resources sector continues to provide outstanding economic benefits for regional Queenslanders, with an increase of nearly 9000 mining jobs in 2021 compared with 2020, including nearly 4000 extra jobs in Outback Queensland.

“The four-quarter average of the total number of Queensland mining jobs has improved 13.1 per cent to almost 78,000.”