That forecast by Hunter Valley Research Foundation joint Director of Research Robin Mcdonald was made at a breakfast meeting of Maitland Business Chamber on Thursday.

The city was well positioned to be competitive, she said.

But low education retention rates needed to be addressed as knowledge-based industries took over from mining and retail as job generators.

Maitland’s 29 per cent high school completion rate compares with 31 per cent in the Hunter overall, and with 42 per cent in NSW and 49 per cent in Sydney.

The city’s most predominate level of qualification was a certificate III or IV (19 per cent).

Only 7 per cent of the population had a bachelor degree, compared with 12 per cent for the State.

“The major point I was trying to make was Maitland has a key attribute that gives it a competitive edge,” Ms Mcdonald said.

“In terms of our population base, number one, it’s growing, and number two, it’s relatively young.

“You’ve got to travel far and wide in NSW to find that.

“The second thing that puts Maitland in a good position is job growth and, thirdly, relatively speaking, house prices are affordable.

“That puts us in a competitive position and also a sustainable position.

“Maitland isn’t going to disappear like a lot of less diverse areas.”

Ms Mcdonald said the city’s highest employers were the manufacturing, mining and retail industries, which were important to the city’s economy.

But she said they were no longer job creators.

When the interest rate cycle began to decline, the region was likely to see a gap in the supply of highly qualified people to fill knowledge-based jobs.

The challenge for the city then, was to encourage further education.

“Maitland has a lower rate of high school completion than the State and certainly Sydney,” Ms Mcdonald said.

“And we have a lower rate of tertiary qualifications.

“We’ve got a lot of certificate- and trade-qualified people but when it comes to higher qualifications, again we are certainly behind the State and Sydney.

“Juxtapose that with businesses that are growing as a group have relatively high entry level requirements, high output and higher incomes.

“Those industries are health, education, finance, all the professional services such as lawyers, accountants, architects, surveyors.

“That’s where the growth is happening and those are the industries in which employment will continue to grow.

“So, we as a region and as a local government area need to be able to meet the demands of those growing industries.

“We need to keep our youth and we need to skill our youth to meet demand.”