Public health job advertisements in Australia and New Zealand: a changing landscape

Abstract

Objective: To describe available public health jobs in Australia and New Zealand by comparing recent job advertisements. Methods: We screened vacancies from 14 online job boards for public health jobs in late 2018. Data collected included information on job titles, sector, contract tenure, location and salary. We compared our findings with those of a job advertisements study from 2005. Results: We found 333 public health job advertisements in Australia and New Zealand. Common roles included project officers, researchers and managers. Nearly 40% of jobs asked for a ‘tertiary’ degree, with an additional 20% requiring a PhD degree. A qualification in public health was considered essential in 13% of job advertisements. Median annual salary range was $95,000–$111,365. Conclusions: There is not one specific public health job. Instead, such jobs are diverse in role, sector, qualification level required and the salary they confer. Implications for public health: There is a demand for skilled workers to perform increasingly complex public health functions, but this may eventually be outpaced by graduate supply. Furthermore, while salaries are considerable, long‐term positions are not, and this has implications for the sustainability of the public health workforce.

Labour market competition for public health graduates in the United States: A comparison of workforce taxonomies with job postings before and during the COVID‐19 pandemic

“…Several research studies on PHW have utilized job descriptions analysis to discern employer demands. [37][38][39][40][41] New technologies and methodologies allow for ISCO-08 and SOC coding of large-scale job postings data, thereby creating a list of occupations for which employers are currently seeking PHGs. Utilizing job postings data, to contrast with existing taxonomies, also provides data-driven, 'real time' insights more quickly than periodic surveys or expert opinion.…”

“…Although job postings are not created for the purposes of workforce research, many studies have been conducted which leverage the rich, text‐based information from job postings—approximately 85% of which are posted on the internet 36 —to infer employer needs and workforce trends. Several research studies on PHW have utilized job descriptions analysis to discern employer demands 37–41 …”

The growth of Australian public health graduates and courses, 2001‐2018: implications for education and employment opportunities

“…However, different courses have different labour markets, and it is not a given that public health courses (or any course in particular) should grow proportionally over time. A previous study of job demand for public health in Australia showed that demand had increased between 14% and 60% from 2003 to 2018 8 . This is far less than the growth of course completions in the same time frame, with growth in completions over this time being two‐ to three‐fold higher than the growth in job advertisements.…”

“…There are potential issues associated with the increased expansion of public health education, such as the delineation between undergraduate and postgraduate offerings and the relationship between courses offered and the job market. For example, recent Australian research examined job advertisements for public health jobs, 8 and while it showed that a public health qualification was the most commonly required qualification, very few employers specified which level of qualification (e.g. undergraduate or postgraduate) they considered essential.…”

What Do Public Health Graduates Do and Where Do They Go? An Analysis of Job Destinations and Mismatch in Australian Public Health Graduates

“…Houghton, Braunack-Mayer and Hiller interviewed graduates from Adelaide University’s Bachelor of Health Sciences from 1992 to 1999 [ 7 ], finding that whilst the majority (59%) worked in ‘public health’, they were ‘doing so in a wide range of roles, reflecting the diversity of the public health workforce’. In 2019, Watts et al found that public health job advertisements are distributed among government, not-for-profit, academia, and the private sector, whilst also having a great deal of occupational variance [ 8 ].…”