Knowledge Workers

Overview

The term "knowledge worker" was first coined by Peter Drucker in his book, The Landmarks of Tomorrow (1959). Drucker defined knowledge workers as high-level workers who apply theoretical and analytical knowledge, acquired through formal training, to develop products and services. He noted that knowledge workers would be the most valuable assets of a 21st-century organisation because of their high level of productivity and creativity. 

Knowledge workers include professionals such as software developers, accountants, engineers, architects, lawyers, physicians, pharmacists, scientists, financial analysts and design thinkers.

Using criteria available within the Synthetic Dataset, propella.ai has defined Knowledge Workers as:

1. Having their Occupation as either:

• Professional
• Manager

2. Works in one of the following Industries (by ANZSIC category)

• Information Media and Telecommunications
• Professional, Scientific & Technical Services
• Financial and Insurance Services

3. Has a Tertiary Qualification

While there are 2.7 million people employed in the workforce that live in Greater Sydney, there are only 251,562 (11%) of workers that qualify under this definition of Knowledge Worker.

These figures are from the 2016 Census and include full and part-time workers. The Synthetic Dataset will be updated to reflect2021 Census data once the relevant data is released by the ABS (anticipated to be early 2023).  

Figure 1: Shows the number of Knowledge Workers in Sydney as identified by propella.ai's "Synthetic data" set, according to our definition above.