WA snaffles lion's share of nation's jobs growth Western Australia, with 10 per cent of Australia's population, has taken two-thirds of the nation's growth in full-time jobs over the past two years - as the mining boom has split the nation into fast, slow and reverse lanes. By contrast, Victoria, with 25 per cent of the nation's population, has experienced almost half of its growth in unemployment in the same two years. In that time, the Bureau of Statistics estimates, Victoria has gained only 11 new jobs for every 100 new people of working age. Queensland has gained just 20, NSW 28, South Australia 29 - whereas WA has gained 80 jobs for every 100 extra people, aged 15 and over. Tasmania now has a lane to itself - going backwards. In the two years to January, which saw the state government cut services heavily as it tries to get back in the black, it has shed a net 6200 jobs and lost 7700 full-time jobs - 5 per cent of its full-time workers. Australia has had resources booms before, but never one on this scale, or which has divided the nation so dramatically. Last week's capital expenditure figures showed that business investment fell in real terms in 2012 in NSW, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania - despite the national figures showing a strong growth of 19 per cent. In fact, the national figure was an average of two utterly different figures. Business investment grew 35 per cent last year in the resource states - Western Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory. But it slumped 4 per cent in the south-eastern states - NSW, Victoria, SA, Tasmania and the ACT - home to two-thirds of Australians. Most of that fall was in Victoria, where capital spending by private businesses in 2012 accounted for less than 6 per cent of the state's output. It is just above the levels of the 1991-92 recession, when it bottomed at 5.5per cent. NSW is at similar levels, but then it has spent most of the past decade in that state. South Australia is much the same, Tasmania even below, with business investment now less than 5 per cent of GDP. By contrast, capital expenditure by private businesses last year accounted for roughly 15 per cent of Queensland's output, 25 per cent of output in WA, and between 25 and 30 per cent in the Northern Territory.