Australia will need an additional 650,000 tech workers by 2030

Announcements 07-May-2024

Last August, the Australian Government and the Tech Council of Australia made headlines for announcing that by 2030, Australia would create 1.2 million tech jobs.

As of then, tech was equivalent to Australia’s seventh largest employer and those extra people would be needed to join the workforce to meet projected growth.

“Australia will need an additional 650,000 tech workers by 2030 to meet the 2030 target,” said Minister for Industry and Science Ed Husic at the time.

As of today, around 85,000 workers in tech have been made redundant in 2023, according to the headcount live tracker at Layoffs.fyi. The numbers are even higher on tracker website trueup.io, at over 100,000. Whichever is closer to the mark, tech giants seem to be responsible for much of the larger numbers.

Software company Microsoft, Google’s parent company Alphabet, Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, IBM, Salesforce and Amazon have been among those cutting workers loose.

Today, a confluence of number of factors is behind the current situation, which includes over-hiring during the pandemic, a slowdown in demand for their services post-COVID, rising inflation and interest rates, and an uncertain economic landscape where downturns are becoming more possible.

Source Tens of thousands have been laid off in tech: what will happen next? | UNSW Newsroom