I’m reasonably confident there won’t be a precipitous fall in mining sector employment in Queensland, despite the news of 900 job losses across the Australian mining sector, with a large proportion of those job losses occurring in Queensland (Mining giants axe 900 jobs).

Total employment in the Queensland mining industry has trebled in the last eight years (see chart below). While some of this increase will reflect irrational exuberance about the resources super cycle, I expect much of the increase in employment will have followed rational investment decision-making processes that took into account the probabilities of commodity price declines. Hence I expect that a lot of the jobs that have been gained in the Queensland mining sector in recent years are reasonably secure.