Employment Outlook
Writer
Average wage for
Employment Levels
Around 24,400 people are currently employed as Writers in Australia. This is set to increase slightly to 26,900 people by 2019, according to the Department of Employment.
Employment by State
45.4% of all Writers are employed in NSW. The area with the lowest number of Writers is NT, with only 0.6%.
Gender Split
This is a slightly male dominated industry with 53.4% of Writers being male and 46.6% female.
Age Brackets
The most popular age for people working as Writers is 25-34 years old, with 33.7%. A small percentage (3.9%) of people get into this career path older, aged 65 and over. There is also a number of people who enjoy a career as Writers, with 9.7% aged 20-24.
Hours Worked
Writers work an average of 42.7 hours a week which is 1.8 hours higher than the average for all occupations.
Education Level
The majority of Writers have a Bachelor Degree qualification (41.3%) or are at a Year 12 level (25.8%). 74.1% of people have a Cert III or higher, whilst 25.9% have a qualification which is Year 12 or lower.
Writer Duties & Tasks
- Create and develop ideas and themes for books, plays, musicals, media, educational or informational texts, and multimedia products.
- Research topic through original and secondary materials, interviews and other methods.
- Plan, organise, draft, write, and re-write.
- Negotiate royalties, publication dates and numbers of copies to be printed.
- Oversee the preparation of scripts for musicals, news, sports and special events programs.
- Critically review own work and the work of others for future improvement.
Professional Associations & Groups
*The information provided on this page is from the Department of Employment’s Job Outlook website. All salary ranges are from Payscale. Where jobs are not exact matches, job areas have been used. This information is to be used as a guide only.
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