The warning is everywhere: artificial intelligence is coming for our jobs. But Australia’s first national study of generative AI tells a more precise and a more unequal story. AI won’t touch every job the same way. Some workers will gain a tireless assistant while others will watch parts of their role disappear. The question that matters isn’t whether AI will change work. It’s whose work it changes, and why theirs.
Source: Jobs and Skills Australia (2025), Gen AI Capacity Study.
Points below the dashed line are more augmentable than automatable. Source: Jobs and Skills Australia (2025), Gen AI Capacity Study.
Source: Jobs and Skills Australia (2025), Gen AI Capacity Study.
291 of 357 occupations shown (earnings are suppressed for some, mostly higher-paid managerial roles). Source: Jobs and Skills Australia (2025), Gen AI Capacity Study; ABS Survey of Employee Earnings and Hours (2025).
The employment projections explicitly exclude the effects of AI. Sources: Jobs and Skills Australia (2025), Gen AI Capacity Study; Jobs and Skills Australia (2025), Employment Projections, May 2025 to May 2035.
But here’s what the spreadsheets miss: people. Australia’s official ten-year jobs forecast the numbers behind training places, migration and funding doesn’t account for AI at all. So the receptionist, the bookkeeper, the sales assistant being pointed toward a “growing” career may be walking into work that’s quietly being hollowed out beneath them. They deserve better than to find out the hard way. None of this calls for panic — AI will help far more workers than it replaces. It calls for honesty: naming who carries the most risk, building reskilling that works with AI rather than against it, and fixing the forecasts that decide where we send the next generation. The future of work isn’t something that just happens to people. It’s something we can plan for them and with them.
Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2025). Survey of employee earnings and hours, Australia [Data set]. https://www.abs.gov.au/
Jobs and Skills Australia. (2025). Our gen AI transition: The generative AI capacity study [Data set]. Australian Government. https://www.jobsandskills.gov.au/studies/generative-artificial-intelligence-capacity-study
Jobs and Skills Australia. (2026). Occupation profiles data [Data set]. Australian Government. https://www.jobsandskills.gov.au/data/occupation-and-industry-profiles
Jobs and Skills Australia. (2025). Employment projections: May 2025 to May 2035 [Data set]. Australian Government. https://www.jobsandskills.gov.au/data/employment-projections