Mind the gap: Where you fit in the changing jobs landscape

Updated

At what age are you most likely to be a sportsperson, barrister or bus driver? Turns out the answers can be very different, depending on your gender.

See for yourself.

The charts generated below show the age distribution of workers in different jobs. The higher the peak, the more workers that age (as a percentage of all workers in that job).

If you're at the highest peak, you're the typical age for your job.

We have good reason to think of some jobs as dominated by millennials (for example, kitchenhand or bar attendant) and others as clearly in baby boomer territory (think farmer or sewing machinist).

But the latest census data reveals some surprising patterns when we look at men and women separately.

We're going to show you 12 occupations with wide gaps in average age between male and female workers. See if you notice a difference between the kinds of jobs in which men are older than their female colleagues and vice versa.

Here are the age distributions for six jobs in which men are significantly older than women, on average.

Peaks to the left of a chart show a high percentage of young workers; peaks to the right show a high percentage of older workers.

Veterinarians have the largest age gap towards older men of all the jobs in the census. Male vets have an average age of 49, compared to 38 for their female peers — a difference of 11 years.

Barristers have the second-biggest gap. Male barristers have an average age of nearly 52; female barristers, 42 — a difference of 10 years.

Solicitors and dental practitioners both have a gender age gap of nine years. Their average ages are also the same: 47 for men and 38 for women.

GPs and paramedics both have a gender age gap of roughly 7.5 years.

The average ages for GPs are 49 for men and 41.5 for women. Among paramedics it's 43.6 and 36.

Let's turn now to the jobs with the largest age differences in the opposite direction: jobs where women workers tend to be significantly older than their male colleagues.

The difference is stark. Most of the jobs in which men tend to be much older than women are high-paying professions.

Jobs with large age gaps in the opposite direction, however, are mostly low-skill and low-pay.

Kitchenhands have the largest gender age gap of any occupation. The average age of women in this job is 38, compared to 26 for men — a difference of 12 years.

While a high percentage of female kitchenhands are teenagers (that's the first peak in the red line), a significant share are in their 50s (that's the second bump in the red line).

Cooks and shelf fillers both have a gender age gap of roughly 10 years. The average ages for cooks are 42 for women and 33 for men. For shelf fillers, it's 37 and 27.

The gender age gap for receptionists is seven years. The average age for women is 41, compared to 34 for men.

Fitness instructors and housekeepers both have a gender gap of 6.6 years.

Women fitness instructors have an average age of 40, while their male colleagues are roughly 33. For housekeepers, it's 42 for women and 36 for men.

So why are so many female baby boomers doing the same jobs as teenagers and students?

"There'd be one main reason: that's the only work they can get," Johanna Wyn, director of The University of Melbourne's Youth Research Centre, said.

Older women are less likely to have completed higher education, while those who did often find their qualifications are no longer relevant after taking extended time away from work to raise children.

"It's very difficult to get back into those high-skill, high-pay occupations after spending time out of the workforce to raise children," Angela Knox, from the University of Sydney business school, said.

"So women tend to downgrade when they return to work."

This also partly explains why highly-paid occupations having the widest gender age gaps in the opposite direction, between older men and younger women.

The other factor is more positive.

"Women attain higher levels of education than men now, so you're seeing more women coming into these professional occupations at a younger age," Associate Professor Knox said.

Sorry, this video has expired Video: Spot the difference (ABC News)

Recently-retired solicitor Helen Kennett is among the rare baby boomer women who continued working full-time after having children. The cultural barriers facing women in the profession were "huge", she said.

"It was definitely unusual to have young women in the occupation… There were a lot of older men in the profession who had not yet realised that women had the potential to do as good a job," the 63-year-old said.

Census figures show nearly half of Australia's female solicitors are millennials, for example, compared with 30 per cent of male solicitors. The drop-off in women aged 30 and older is both steady and steep.

Ms Kennett said she "absolutely" understood why so many of her peers did not return to work after having children.

"You don't have to be away from work for long to start losing your confidence… especially with litigation, which is quite an aggressive field," she said.

"As time goes by, employers, too, are less likely to think you'll be able to perform the way they need."

Professor Wyn said many workplaces were yet to catch up with dramatic changes in women's education.

"Women are in tertiary education in higher numbers than men but [this] data is showing that women really aren't yet getting the economic benefits of that… It's not being translated into their position in the workforce or their pay," she said.

She said longer periods spent studying meant the window of time between starting a career and a family was becoming increasingly narrow.

"Women are a bit pincered… The biological clock is ticking but they're being pushed further down the age track with education and the time needed to set the foundations of a career."

It's a question solicitor Jacqui Fetchet, 27, has pondered, too. "It takes 12 years to make partner, if you're lucky, so if you're 26 and graduating from law school and then you start working, you go through the numbers and realise that 10-12 years is the prime time for young kids."

The attrition rate of young women in her profession can be discouraging, she said. "Particularly from a gender perspective and as a young person, the work hours and culture seem a bit intimidating… You're talking about people working 10- to 14-hour days on a regular basis.

"I think a lot of people are just saying, 'Well, I care more about having relationships and being healthy, and loving my family than I do about this career'. That's a really hard choice to make."

Notes about this story

The 2016 census asked employed people aged 15 or older about the main job they held in the week before census night.

Millennials includes people aged 15-34. Baby boomers includes people aged 54-71.

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Topics: work, community-and-society, youth, business-economics-and-finance, economic-trends, australia

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