The Economic Contribution of the Cement Concrete and Aggregates Industry in Australia 

Oxford Economics Australia provided the Cement Concrete & Aggregates Australia (CCAA) with a comprehensive, independent economic assessment of the industry’s national and state-level contribution. The project deliverables included rigorous input-output modelling to quantify GDP and employment impacts across direct, indirect, and induced channels; state-by-state economic analysis covering all eight jurisdictions; supply chain mapping; and a forward-looking outlook addressing construction demand, productivity, supply chain resilience, labour, and decarbonisation. Together, these deliverables gave CCAA a robust, evidence-based platform to demonstrate the industry’s full economic footprint and make a compelling case for policy reform, investment, and strategic planning at national and state levels. 

Background: A foundational industry whose value was largely invisible in policy discussions 

Concrete is the second most consumed substance on Earth after water – and Australia’s built environment depends on it entirely. The cement, concrete and aggregates (CCA) industry sits at the very start of Australia’s construction supply chain, supplying the materials essential to housing, transport networks, energy systems, and social infrastructure. Its annual revenues reached $16.9 billion in 2025, supported by a workforce of nearly 22,000 directly employed, with a further 7,500 truck drivers transporting CCA freight across the country. 

Despite this foundational role, the CCA industry’s full economic contribution had never been comprehensively and independently quantified at the national and state level. The absence of robust data meant that its true value – and the critical risks it faces – were routinely overlooked in infrastructure planning, regulatory frameworks, and policy dialogue. Discussions about Australia’s construction capacity tended to focus on downstream pressures such as labour shortages and project sequencing, while the upstream challenges facing the CCA industry – quarry approvals, industrial land protection, freight logistics, decarbonisation costs – received far less attention. 

With Australia’s five-year public infrastructure pipeline valued at $242 billion, ambitious national housing targets of 1.2 million new homes by 2029, and the country’s accelerating energy transition placing rising demand on concrete-intensive materials, the need for a clear, evidence-based picture of the industry’s economic significance had never been more urgent. 

The Challenge: Building an evidence base to inform policy, investment, and industry strategy 

CCAA needed independent, rigorous analysis that would go beyond simple direct employment or revenue figures to capture the full cascade of economic activity its members generate. The key challenge was to demonstrate – credibly and comprehensively – how the CCA industry’s activities ripple through Australia’s economy: through supply chains involving mining, transport, manufacturing, and professional services; through the wages its workforce spends across every sector of the economy; and through its indispensable role enabling a $175 billion construction sector that itself accounts for 7.6% of Australia’s GDP. 

The analysis needed to work at multiple levels simultaneously: national totals that would resonate with federal policymakers, state-level breakdowns that would speak to the priorities of each government and jurisdiction, and thematic deep-dives into the structural challenges – supply chain resilience, productivity, labour shortages, and the path to net zero by 2050 – that will determine whether the industry can meet Australia’s future demands. 

Without a credible, independently produced evidence base of this scale and rigour, CCAA would struggle to secure the planning protections, approvals reforms, and policy support its members needed to deliver the materials underpinning Australia’s infrastructure ambitions. 

Solution: Independent modelling and strategic analysis that quantified the industry’s true value – and gave CCAA the tools to act on it 

Oxford Economics Australia designed and executed a comprehensive economic contribution assessment using an input-output model of the Australian economy, calibrated to ABS national accounts data and IBIS World industry figures. The modelling captured the industry’s total economic footprint across three channels – direct activity within the CCA industry itself, indirect effects through its supply chain, and induced impacts from employee spending – producing definitive national and state-level estimates for FY 2024/25. 

National GDP & Employment Breakdown