Jobs in the food sector are dwindling but public service numbers are spiralling, according to ABS figures that suggests the challenge on the Weatherill Government’s hands as it tries to transition to a “new economy”.

Jay Weatherill raised eyebrows yesterday when he claimed that “we’ve created more jobs in the South Australian economy than we’ve lost” over the past six months.

“The thing is,” the Premier argued, “we’re just not growing fast enough to meet the growing size of our workforce.”

The raw data suggests otherwise, with 807,800 people employed in March, falling to 801,100 by August. Over the same period, the number of unemployed rose from 57,100 to 66,500, but the size of the total labour force grew only marginally, from 864,900 to 867,600.

On both trend and seasonally adjusted terms, though, Weatherill is correct to note that there are more people in work than there were six months ago. The number of unemployed also rose over the same period, by around 10,000 in trend terms and 14,000 seasonally adjusted, during which time the labour market grew by 14,000 (trend) and 18,000 (seasonally adjusted).

Economist Michael O’Neil has been analysing the changing nature of the SA workforce at his SA Centre for Economic Studies, and says while arguments can be made for Weatherill’s claim, there appears little cause for optimism.

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“One of the issues here is some people use trend data on employment statistics, other people use seasonally adjusted and others use raw data,” he told InDaily.

“The Premier would be quoting from the most favourable source, and I’m not sure exactly what data is being put in front of him, but certainly it’s the case there’s no significant job creation in some of the key sectors of the SA economy.”

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The severity of full-time job losses in key sectors has been offset in part by a growth in part-time positions.

From February to August, the number of people in fulltime jobs fell from 539,900 to 521,600, while those in part-time work climbed from 263,100 to 279,700.

As Weatherill told ABC radio yesterday: “If you’re a bloke … you wouldn’t have seen that many jobs because a lot of the growth has been in occupations that have been traditionally female dominated, a lot of part-time work.”

He nominated “the health and health services sector, the food manufacturing sector, professional and technical services, tourism and international students” as areas of jobs growth.

But the raw data tells a different story, with the number of jobs in the Accommodation and Food Services sector falling on both a full-time and part-time basis, by a total of 3700 jobs – more than mining and manufacturing combined (2000 jobs).

The blue collar sector that has seen a big decline is agriculture, forestry and fishing.

Similarly health care and social assistance jobs have dropped off over the past six months.

Worryingly for a state long seen as a public service economy, the two sectors that saw significant growth in SA over the same period were administrative and support services and public administration and safety, which grew by more than 10,000.

O’Neil says there are new jobs being created in the “food processing area…and that’s set to increase, but it’s not offsetting significant losses in other areas of the economy”.

He said the past six months had seen “quite noticeable announcements of job losses in white collar work and construction companies”.

“Offsetting that, one can’t point to significant announcements of job opportunities,” he said.

O’Neil has analysed the average hours worked over the period, and notes that despite the rise in part-time employment “we can see increases in the average hours worked”.

“Employers are tending to hold onto people they’ve got (and boost their hours) rather than take on more people,” he said.

“This is like the GFC-type response … you boost up the hours of people that you’ve got.”

Opposition spokesman David Pisoni says the ABS figures show that “despite Jay Weatherill’s spin, key South Australian industries are contracting and jobs are disappearing”.

“Jay Weatherill has nominated Mining and Food as the top two priorities of his Labor Government, yet together those industries have shed 12,400 jobs over the past 12 months,” he said.