Job market · Retrospective · 2025–2026
The 2025 Australian Job Market: How It Actually Played Out
A retrospective on the Australian job market — what was forecast in late 2024, what actually happened in 2025, and what the data tells job seekers about the year ahead. Written with the benefit of seeing how the year landed.
In thirty seconds
- 2025 unemployment peaked at 4.5% in September — the highest rate since November 2021. The 2024 forecast was directionally right but understated the rise.
- Tech was the surprise: around 31,000 tech jobs were lost in the year to May 2025 — a 3.7% decline against general labour-market growth of 2%. Atlassian, Telstra, and CBA all cut roles to AI and automation.
- Cybersecurity, AI specialists, and cloud engineers stayed critically short. The "tech jobs" forecast was wrong on volume but right on specialisation.
- Renewable energy was the clearest winner. Q4 2025 was the strongest quarter on record for new wind and solar capacity switched on (2.1 GW). 48% of renewables workers got pay rises.
- The forecast called for hybrid work, soft skills, and gig-economy growth — all directionally correct but harder to measure cleanly.
- The big lesson: forecast on direction, hedge on magnitude. The 2025 job market moved less than feared in some places and more than expected in others.
This post was originally published in September 2024 as a forward-looking forecast about the Australian job market in 2025. We've kept it live — and updated it from the other side. With data through to early 2026 from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the Department of Industry, the Tech Council of Australia, and the Clean Energy Council, this is what the year actually looked like.
Some predictions held up. Some didn't. The retrospective matters more than the forecast did — because it's the lesson candidates entering 2026 need.
The headline numbers
4.5%
Unemployment rate at September 2025 peak — highest since 2021
ABS Labour Force−31k
Tech jobs lost in year to May 2025 (3.7% decline)
DISR2.1 GW
New renewable capacity switched on in Q4 2025 alone — record quarter
Clean Energy CouncilThe forecast vs the reality, scored
Seven predictions were made in the original post. Here's how each one held up against actual 2025 data.
Employment rates and economic outlook
Right but understatedUnemployment had risen to 4.2% by July 2024 and would likely keep rising in 2025 as restructuring continued.
Unemployment peaked at 4.5% in September 2025 — the highest seasonally adjusted rate since November 2021. By March 2026 it had settled at 4.3%. The annual retrenchment rate ticked up to 1.9% (from 1.7% the year before).
Takeaway for 2026 The labour market is softer than it was, but not in crisis. Job seekers should expect more competition per role and longer search times, but the underlying market remains active.
Technology-driven job growth
Wrong on volumeJobs in IT, cyber security, data science, and cloud computing would expand even as other sectors restructured.
Around 31,000 tech jobs were lost in the year to May 2025 — a 3.7% decline while the broader labour market grew 2%. The federal government's 1.2 million tech jobs target for 2030 is no longer on track. Atlassian cut 150 Australian customer-support roles to AI; Telstra and CBA cut hundreds more.
Takeaway for 2026 Tech as a category is no longer a safe bet — but specialisation within tech still is. Cybersecurity, AI engineering, and cloud architecture remain critically short: 621 new cyber jobs advertised per month, with 54,000 more cyber operations and management workers needed by 2030. The forecast was right on the specialists, wrong on the generalists.
Green jobs on the rise
Strongly correctAustralia's renewable energy investment would create thousands of new jobs in solar, wind, and clean energy through 2025.
Q4 2025 was the strongest quarter on record for new wind and solar farms switched on — 2.1 GW across nine projects. The clean energy workforce reached 26,800 direct FTE roles (up 120% over the past decade). 48% of renewables workers got pay rises in 2025; 21% saw rises above 5%. Investment commitments in 2024 jumped from $1.5bn to $9bn.
Takeaway for 2026 The biggest opportunity in the Australian labour market right now. 32,000 additional electricians needed by 2030 just to meet the 82% renewable target. 450,000 jobs in clean energy infrastructure expected over the decade — about a third of all jobs growth. Cross-overs from construction, mining, and electrical trades are actively recruited.
Healthcare and aged care expansion
CorrectHealthcare and aged care would expand significantly through 2025, with sustained demand for nurses, aged care workers, mental health professionals.
Public sector employment (which includes most healthcare) grew 3.3% from June 2024 to June 2025. Healthcare and social assistance remained the largest employing industry in Australia. Aged care continued its workforce expansion under sustained Royal Commission reform pressure. Mental health services and telehealth roles continued growing through 2025.
Takeaway for 2026 The healthcare sector remains structurally strong and recruiting at every level. Specialist nursing, mental health, allied health, and aged care leadership roles are all in active demand. For more on tailoring resumes to this sector, see our nursing and medical resume guidance.
Hybrid work and flexibility
CorrectThe hybrid work model would be firmly established across most industries by 2025, with employers offering flexibility to attract talent.
Hybrid work settled in as the default for office-based professional roles through 2025 — though the second half of the year saw notable return-to-office pushes from Australian banks, professional services, and federal government departments. Two to three days in the office became the most common arrangement.
Takeaway for 2026 Hybrid is the new normal, but the centre of gravity has shifted slightly back toward the office. Roles advertised as "fully remote" are fewer than they were in 2023; "hybrid with two or three days in office" is now the dominant pattern.
Focus on soft skills
Directionally rightEmployers would increasingly value soft skills like communication, problem-solving, adaptability, and leadership as automation reduced routine tasks.
The soft-skills emphasis became sharper through 2025 — but for a different reason than expected. With AI-generated resumes flooding the market, the human element of how a candidate communicates, adapts, and collaborates became the differentiator that AI couldn't fake. Recruiter interviews leaned harder on behavioural questions.
Takeaway for 2026 Soft skills now matter for an additional reason: they're the part of your candidacy AI can't replicate. The interview is where they get tested. For preparation, see our interview coaching service.
The gig economy and freelancing
MixedThe gig economy would expand in 2025 as redundancies pushed more professionals toward freelancing.
Freelance and contract work grew, but unevenly. 1.3 million underemployed Australians (preferred more hours) as of May 2025 — including many who'd taken contract or part-time work after losing permanent roles. Tech, marketing, and design saw the strongest contractor demand. The pure platform-gig economy (rideshare, delivery) plateaued.
Takeaway for 2026 Contract work is increasingly viable as a deliberate career strategy, not just a fallback. Professional services contractors with strong personal brands and networks are commanding premium rates. The trade-off: less stability, but higher day rates and faster role variety.
The 2025 forecast got the direction right on most things and the magnitude wrong on most things. The hardest call to make a year out wasn't which way the market would move — it was how far.
What this means for 2026 job seekers
The patterns that defined 2025 carry into 2026 with some notable shifts. Five things matter most for candidates in the year ahead:
- Application volume is up, and competition is real. The average Australian job ad now attracts around 184 applicants — up from 41 in late 2024. Standing out requires deliberate effort, not just sending more applications. We covered this in detail in why recruiters are facing a surge in job applications.
- AI in your resume is now a credibility risk. The market has moved fast. Recruiters can spot AI-generated resumes in under 20 seconds, and most downgrade them. See can employers tell if you used ChatGPT for your resume.
- Specialise within your sector, don't generalise across. The 2025 lesson is that "tech" lost jobs while "cybersecurity" gained them. The same dynamic applies in healthcare (specialist nursing > generalist), finance (transformation specialists > generalist accountants), and government (capability-aligned APS6+ > junior generalists).
- Renewables is the place to look if you can transfer in. Construction trades, electrical, mining, project management, and engineering all transfer with minimal retraining. The sector is hiring at every level and paying premiums for skilled experience.
- Hybrid is settled, but office-based seniority is back. Senior roles are increasingly expected to anchor a team in-person two or three days a week. Fully-remote senior roles outside of specialist fields are now the exception, not the rule.
The forecasting lesson
One bigger lesson worth taking from the 2025 retrospective: career advice that talks about whole sectors at once is increasingly unreliable. "Tech is growing" was true in 2022, false in 2025, and partially true again in 2026 — but only inside specific subsectors. The right unit of analysis isn't the industry; it's the specific role family within the industry, calibrated to what's actually being hired.
Job seekers who do well in 2026 will be the ones who can articulate, with specificity, where their skills sit in a hiring market — not where their industry sits. That's a resume-and-LinkedIn job. It's also why generic templated resumes are landing worse than ever: they describe a candidate's industry rather than their specific value within it.
For the structural how-to on building that into a resume, see our master guide on how to write a resume that gets interviews.
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