Abstract: With the economic, social and environmental impact of escalating congestion, Australian city plans increasingly require more locally-based workplace solutions to reduce the need for cross-city travel. Exacerbated by rapid and high population and economic growth, the strategic growth plans of cities such as Perth, Western Australia, are often focussed on higher intensity infill and more peripheral lower density greenfield development to accommodate growth. Both are frequently framed in terms of achieving “balanced growth” through the setting of employment self-sufficiency targets where numbers of residents and employment opportunities are “balanced” at a sub-regional basis throughout the city to reduce the need to travel. In this paper, the current policy of planning for self-sufficiency in the Perth metropolitan area is evaluated against an enhanced understanding of the wider literature on the motives, measures, achievements and complexities inherent in the notion of balanced growth. Focussing on employment-side complexities, an acknowledged underdeveloped area of inquiry in relation to achieving balanced growth, this paper presents a preliminary analysis of 2011 journey-to-work data disaggregated by occupation and industry of employment for selected sub-metropolitan regions in Perth. It is argued that the current jobshousing balance derived self-sufficiency targets of the strategic growth plan for the Perth metropolitan area are inappropriate in their present form for reducing travel between sub-regions for two reasons. Firstly, labour market differentiation and specialisation means that skills-job matching seldom occurs on a local basis (i.e. people do not work at the nearest work location). Secondly, other than the service sector, the spatially uneven distribution of industry is based on proximity to resources (taking advantage of economies of scale and agglomeration benefits such as access to specialised labour, inputs or complimentary firms) rather than where people live. It is concluded that measurements of balanced growth must extend beyond the use of local aggregate jobs-housing balance targets which do not account for residents working outside their local regions. Furthermore, setting of these targets should be informed by a more rigorous and nuanced understanding of employment-side dynamics and journey-towork realities.