How Big Is the Mining Industry in Western Australia?

By value, Western Australia is one of the largest mining jurisdictions on earth. In calendar 2025 the state recorded $226 billion in mineral and petroleum sales, supported more than 136,000 full-time equivalent on-site mining jobs (plus 11,244 direct petroleum jobs), and returned $10.6 billion in royalty and related revenue to the state. Those figures come from the WA Government's own resources industry data, published 28 May 2026.

The headline number to quote is $226 billion in sales for 2025. That is sales value of minerals and petroleum produced in WA, not profit and not gross state product. It moves with commodity prices as much as with volume — which is why gold's record $36 billion came on a production rebound rather than a production boom, and why lithium set a volume record in a soft price year.

Iron ore, by a wide margin. At $126 billion it is roughly 56% of the state's total mineral and petroleum sales, and 2025 set an all-time export record of 889 million dry metric tonnes. Gold is a clear second at $36 billion, followed by LNG at $32 billion. Everything else — lithium, alumina and bauxite, nickel, copper, salt, mineral sands, rare earths — sits behind that top three.

More than 136,000 full-time equivalent on-site mining roles in 2025, a record level, with a further 11,244 employed directly in petroleum. On-site FTE counts the people physically working at operations, which includes contractor crews — a large share of maintenance, shutdown, drilling, earthworks, electrical and workshop labour on WA sites is delivered by contracting businesses rather than the mine owner.

Investment says yes. Mining and petroleum investment reached a decade-high $34 billion and mineral exploration expenditure hit a record $2.7 billion in 2025, with gold and iron ore the main exploration targets. Exploration and capital spend are the leading indicators contractors care about: they precede new pits, camps, plant builds, sustaining capital works and the maintenance load that follows them.

Royalties are the direct line from mine gate to state finances. Resources royalty and related revenue reached $10.6 billion in 2025, and mineral royalties have been reported as contributing over 20% of the state's bottom line in recent WA Budget commentary. That is the reason mining approvals, workforce and safety regulation get the political attention they do in WA.

Four clusters carry most of the load. The Pilbara (Port Hedland, Karratha, Newman, Tom Price) for iron ore and offshore gas onshore processing; the Goldfields-Esperance region around Kalgoorlie for gold and nickel; the South West and Great Southern for alumina, bauxite, mineral sands and lithium; and Perth as the corporate, engineering, workshop and FIFO hub feeding all of them.

WA is the largest resources state by value, driven almost entirely by iron ore and LNG. Queensland's resources economy is weighted to metallurgical and thermal coal in the Bowen Basin, and NSW to Hunter Valley coal. If you contract nationally, this matters practically: WA work is dominated by iron ore, gold and gas clients with FIFO rosters and Pilbara logistics, while east coast work is coal-dominated with drive-in-drive-out and different award and inductions realities.

A $226 billion sector run largely through contracted labour produces very specific commercial pressure. Tier-1 owners standardise onboarding, competency evidence, pre-starts, timesheet approval and invoicing across dozens of suppliers, and they audit it. The businesses that grow inside a market this big are usually not the cheapest ones — they are the ones that can produce records on request and invoice accurately against approved hours the first time.