Parramatta Jobs growth prospects

Parramatta City Council maintains its own trend estimate, and that stated in the Department of Planning’s (DOP) Metropolitan Plan (2005), of between 30,000 and 40,000 additional workers in the city, in the next 20 years, rather than the “likely” additional figure, released in December 2009, of 11,000, by 2036, as forecast by the Department of Transport’s (DOT) Transport Data Centre (TDC). “The TDC forecasts were based on work by Access Economics which was in the middle of and took account of the GFC at a time when there was a lot of doom and gloom,” council said. The DOT said it took into account the fact that Parramatta did not grow in employment terms between the 2001 and 2006 census and plans for increased development in a range of other areas such as Olympic Park and Macquarie Park, Western Sydney Employment Area, Green Square and Barangaroo. “DOT forecasts of a likely future, and DOP’s use of targets to help stimulate development, are legitimately different,” the DOT said.