Australian, News

NSW record proves coal is still king

Image: Parilov / Adobe Stock.com , coal

Coal mining continues to shine for the New South Wales resources industry with the latest data marking record job numbers across the sector.

The new record jumped to 25,505, the highest number of jobs ever recorded by Coal Services since it began tracking the numbers in 1998.

In fact, it’s more than double the first recorded number in the last quarter of 1998, which saw a workforce of 10,898 coal miners across NSW.

NSW Minerals Council chief executive officer Stephen Galilee said the increase in coal mining jobs in NSW was a sign of the ongoing importance and resilience of the sector.

“The record number of people working in the NSW coal mining sector shows that over the last 25 years, coal mining has become increasingly critical to regional communities and the state economy,” Galilee said.

“A mark of the importance of the coal mining sector to NSW is the strong ongoing demand for our high-quality coal.

“Coal Services figures show that coal exports to our major trade partners are up almost 16 per cent with thermal coal exports used in energy production up over 19 per cent.”

The latest data shows that in the Hunter – NSW’s largest coal mining region – there were 14,750 coal mining jobs in March 2024.

In the Gunnedah region, the data shows that coal mining jobs remained at near-record levels, with 3116 jobs.

The western region of NSW showed coal mining jobs have reached an all-time high with 3585 workers in coal mining compared to just over 1400 when job numbers were first recorded.

In the Southern region of NSW the number of coal mining jobs improved over the last 12 months with 3344 local coal mining workers, over a hundred more than the same time last year.

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