by Optimum
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The short version
JSA may be right that Australia’s economy will look much the same in ten years. I’m far less convinced the jobs inside it will.
Every year brings a new prediction that some technology is about to remake the Australian economy. So when Jobs and Skills Australia released its Jobs and Skills Report 2026 in October, I thought I’d sit down and read it properly to see what it actually says for the people I work with every day: engineering, construction and mining employers.
It takes a much calmer view than the headlines, and I’m not sure I share it. JSA’s projections deliberately leave AI out, yet other modelling released this year points to real change in exactly the sectors I recruit for. Here’s what the report gets right, where I think it falls short, and what I’d be doing about it.
The economy might keep its shape. The jobs inside it won’t.
The first thing that struck me was how little JSA expects to change.
Its projections show the industry mix in 2036 looking much the same as it does today. Construction’s share of all jobs slips from 9.3% to 9.1%, yet the sector still adds around 187,400 workers because the workforce keeps growing. Mining added 64,700 jobs over the past decade.
What moves is the level of skill. JSA expects 93% of employment growth to be in jobs that need a post-secondary qualification. Professionals, the group that includes engineers, are the largest and fastest-growing occupation group, adding more than a million workers by 2036.
Here’s my problem with it. JSA’s baseline does not model shocks such as AI or supply chain disruption. That is a reasonable modelling choice, since you can’t project something you can’t yet measure, but it means the calm picture only holds if AI changes nothing. I don’t think that’s a safe assumption.
EY’s modelling, released in August, tells a different story over the same timeframe. It estimates AI could add $95 billion to $116 billion to the economy by 2036 and create around 36,000 to 44,000 additional jobs. Construction gains the most, driven by data centres and the infrastructure behind them, while mining and agriculture are expected to shed roles as automation reduces the need for labour.
So the industries may not be going anywhere, but the balance between them could shift, and the work inside them is already changing. Either way, nobody is coming to take the pressure off. Competition for capable people in these sectors will keep building.
The trades shortage has become a management problem
Every engineering, construction and mining employer feels the trades shortage, even when the role they are trying to fill sits in an office. It shows up in project timelines, overtime bills and the workload of the managers running thin crews.
Source: Jobs and Skills Australia, Jobs and Skills Report 2026, Figure 16 (JSA Occupation Shortage List 2025). Shares count occupations, not workers.
Electricians, plumbers, carpenters and metal fitters have been on every Occupation Shortage List JSA has published. Apprentice commencements have started to recover, but from a low base, and not fast enough to close a gap that has been building for years.
Meanwhile demand is arriving from new directions. Powering Skills Organisation now estimates Australia needs around 72,000 more electricians, technicians and related trades by 2030, up from 42,000 a year earlier, with data centres alone accounting for up to 13,000. Housing, renewables, digital infrastructure and resources projects are all drawing on the same workforce, and industry told JSA it is worried about exactly that.
Here is why it matters for professional hiring. When crews are short, the people who plan, lead and keep them become far more valuable. A project manager who can hold a stretched team together, or a site leader who skilled workers want to work for, is worth more in 2026 than one who simply knows the technical brief.
The engineer you hire in 2026 is not the one you hired in 2016
Job ads tell the story. JSA’s analysis of a decade of advertising shows engineering and construction employers asking for leadership and initiative far more often than they used to.
Source: Jobs and Skills Australia, Jobs and Skills Report 2026, Figure 19 (Lightcast job ads, JSA analysis). Job ad data does not measure total demand.
The same shift is happening on site. Construction trade ads that mention critical thinking and problem-solving have more than tripled in ten years, with apprentice ads rising even faster. Employers want people who can adapt to new tools and make judgement calls, not just follow a method.
PwC’s 2026 AI Jobs Barometer suggests this is speeding up. Australia’s most AI-exposed occupations added an average of 187 new skills per role over six years, against 93 for the least exposed. Job ads asking for AI skills doubled between 2024 and 2025, and those skills now carry an average wage premium of 62%.
There is an important nuance here. JSA finds that the supply of degree-qualified workers is generally enough to meet growth in highly skilled occupations. So for engineering roles, the scarcity is often not the qualification. It is the combination: technical depth, leadership and the ability to work with AI and new technology, in the same person. The bar is rising for juniors too. PwC found that globally, the most AI-exposed junior roles are seven times more likely to ask for senior-level skills.
A key point
JSA describes job design as a productivity lever. How a role is built affects how well people use their skills, adopt technology and stay. If your position description was written five years ago, it is probably describing a job that no longer exists.
Mining has gone furthest on AI, and it changes who you hire
Mining is one of the most AI-ready industries in the country. Construction is well behind.
Source: Jobs and Skills Australia, Jobs and Skills Report 2026, Figure 5 (National AI Centre, AI Adoption Tracker 2026).
How mining uses AI is telling. Most industries mainly use chat-style assistants, while mining shows stronger use of AI for data entry and document processing. That is work that has traditionally sat with planners, administrators and technical officers, so the roles around it are already shifting.
Scale matters as well. Adoption is close to 70% for businesses with 200 to 500 staff and around 31% for those with fewer than five. Metro firms sit at 42% against 30% in regional areas, which is worth noting in sectors where so much of the work is regional.
For now, AI is changing jobs more than removing them. JSA’s own research suggests nearly half of workers are in roles likely to change rather than be displaced, and it now treats using AI well as a general workforce capability, not a specialist skill. But the early signals are there. The Department of Employment and Workplace Relations found that from late 2022 to February 2026, employment in the most AI-exposed occupations grew 5.6%, against 9.5% in the least exposed, and sat about 2% below its pre-ChatGPT trend. DEWR is careful to say this is not proof, but it is the kind of gap I would be watching, especially in planning, administration and technical support roles.
There is also a quieter finding HR teams should not miss. Some workers use AI unofficially because they worry about being judged for it, which JSA calls “shadow AI”. If your people are hiding how they work, that is a policy gap and a culture question, not a technology one.
Retention is half the recruitment plan
In a tight market, every resignation is a hire you have to make twice. Of the 1.18 million Australians who voluntarily left a job in the year to February 2026, 43% left for a better job and 21% left because of poor working conditions.
In other words, many people who resign are not escaping a bad job. They are moving towards a better one. JSA’s conclusion is that in high-demand sectors, retention will become as important as recruitment, and that clear progression, better use of skills and decent conditions are what keep people.
In engineering, construction and mining, that usually comes down to three things: a visible path from engineer to lead to manager, work that uses what people were hired for, and rosters and conditions that stand up against the competing offer.
What I would do now
None of this needs a long, expensive program. It needs a handful of deliberate decisions.
- Benchmark against the whole market. Your competition for a senior engineer or project manager now includes data centres, renewables and mining, not just your own sector. Compare salary, rosters, flexibility and the quality of the work on offer.
- Rewrite the role before you advertise it. Decide what the job needs in 2026, including leadership and confidence with AI and data, then assess for it. A capability assessment tells you far more than a second technical interview.
- Hire for the gap in the team, not the best CV. If your crews are stretched, the leader who keeps them may matter more than the strongest technical candidate.
- Widen the pool. Career changers, regional candidates, people returning to work and skilled migrants all bring capability a narrow keyword search will miss. JSA also points to recognition of prior learning as a way to make existing skills visible.
- Build retention into the offer. Show candidates the progression path at interview, then deliver it. Have stay conversations with your best people before a recruiter calls them.
- Plan 12 to 24 months out, with AI in the plan. Map your critical roles against your project pipeline, ask which tasks AI is likely to take on over that period, and start searching for the hard roles before the contract is won.
- Put an AI usage policy in place. Bring shadow use into the open, set sensible guardrails and build the skill on purpose.
The takeaway
JSA may be right that Australia’s economy will look much the same in ten years. I’m far less convinced the jobs inside it will. The employers who come out ahead will plan for AI rather than wait for the official projections to catch up, rethink the role, look after the people already in it, and treat leadership and adaptability as seriously as technical skill.
Hiring engineers, project leaders or managers in construction, mining or infrastructure? Optimum Consulting recruits across Australia and helps employers find the right fit, not just the right CV.
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