SYDNEY, Oct. 12 (Xinhua) -- The Australian Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday released the second tranche of the 2021 census data, providing a snapshot of Australia's rising employment and education in emerging fields of science and technology.
Though the four biggest industries combined -- healthcare, retail, construction and education -- employed more than 40 percent of the country's workforce last year, the professional, scientific and technical services ranked fifth with a 7.8 percent share.
Information communication technology (ICT) occupations with the highest growth since 2016 included ICT support and test engineers (15,635, up 54 percent), software and applications programmers (116,927, up 47 percent) and ICT business and systems analysts (34,793, up 47 percent).
The number of people with an information technology qualification surged by 36 percent since 2016 to nearly half a million (470,318).
The fastest growing field of study was security science, seeing a 460-percent jump since 2016 and 5,805 people qualified, while qualifications in artificial intelligence climbed by 200 percent to reach 630 people in 2021.
"The 2021 census data released today about qualifications and occupations reflects the rising prominence of the digital economy in Australia," said Australian Statistician David Gruen AO.
"There are over 260,000 ICT professionals and 74,000 ICT managers in the workforce, an additional 86,000 since the last census," the expert added.
According to the 2021 census data, one in five ICT professionals and ICT managers are female. But for workers aged under 30, female representation is higher, accounting for one in three ICT managers and ICT business and systems analysts.
Migration is also a major contributor to the tech workforce, as two thirds of software and applications programmers were born overseas, with India representing the largest cohort.
Appearing in the top 20 occupations in Australia, software and applications programmer is the third most common job for recent overseas arrivals, with 24,000 arriving since 2016. ■