Job market · Artificial intelligence
Average Job Ad in Australia: 184 Applicants. Some Get 4,000
Applications per role on SEEK have hit all-time highs every month for over three years. Job ads are down. AI lets candidates apply at scale. Here's what's actually happening in the Australian market — and what to do if you're the one trying to stand out.
In thirty seconds
- SEEK applications per job ad rose 16.4% year-on-year to June 2025 — and have grown for over three years uninterrupted, hitting all-time highs every month.
- The average job ad in April 2025 received 184 applications, up from around 41 in late 2024. Some single roles have received over 4,000.
- Job ad volumes have fallen ~5% year-on-year. Fewer roles, more applicants, harder competition everywhere.
- The applications surge is being driven by three things: cost-of-living pressure pushing more people to the market, fewer roles being posted, and AI letting candidates apply faster.
- If you're applying, the playbook isn't "apply more." It's "apply less, but better." High-effort, well-tailored applications still cut through; the surge is mostly low-effort, AI-spam volume.
If you've been on the candidate side of the Australian job market in 2025 or 2026 and felt like the silence is louder than it used to be — you're right. The data is unambiguous. Recruiters across the country are receiving more applications per role than at any point in the modern history of online hiring, and the gap between "applied" and "heard back" has widened sharply.
Here's what's actually happening, what's driving it, and — more usefully — what it means for the way you should be running your job search.
The numbers are extraordinary
184
Average applications per job ad in Australia, April 2025
+16.4%
SEEK applications per ad, year-on-year (June 2025)
3+ yrs
Of uninterrupted month-on-month growth in applications per ad
That 184-per-ad average is a national figure, smoothed across industries. The reality at the extremes is far more punishing. Some single job postings have received over 4,000 applicants. Some sectors have seen application volumes per ad jump 47% year-on-year (Tasmania) and 37% (the ACT) — both states where job ad volumes have been falling at the same time.
Meanwhile, the supply of jobs is shrinking. ABS data shows roughly 327,000 vacancies nationwide in August 2025 — about 30% fewer than the peak in May 2022. Job ads on SEEK have been drifting down for over a year. Fewer roles. More applicants. Compounded together: the toughest competitive environment in the modern history of Australian hiring.
Three things driving the surge
Three forces are stacking on top of each other to produce the numbers above.
1. Cost-of-living pressure has pushed more people into the market
The most underrated driver. Cost-of-living pressure has pushed Australians into job-seeking who weren't actively looking a year ago. SEEK's senior economist Blair Chapman has been explicit about this — the rise in applications per ad is being driven by an increased candidate pool, not by individual candidates applying for more roles. People who'd been comfortable in their current role are now hunting for higher pay. People taking on second jobs. People returning to the workforce after a break. All of them adding to the application pool.
2. Job ad volumes have fallen
The same forces — slowing economy, hiring freezes, restructures — that pushed more people into the market are also pushing employers to advertise fewer roles. SEEK ad volumes have been declining year-on-year for most of 2025. Federal government recruitment in the ACT has fallen sharply. Some of the busiest sectors of the post-COVID recovery (engineering, ICT, healthcare) have all posted multi-month declines in vacancies.
This is the simple maths: the same applicants are now being divided across fewer roles. Even if no individual changed their behaviour, applications per ad would still be rising.
3. AI lets candidates apply at scale
This is the part that gets the most coverage, but it's only the third leg of the stool. Generative AI tools can rewrite resumes to match specific job descriptions, generate cover letters, auto-fill application forms, and prepare interview answers — all in seconds. With the right setup, candidates can send out dozens of applications in a single sitting where it might once have taken a week.
The result is what HR professionals are now calling "application inflation." A single vacancy attracts hundreds of AI-optimised applications, many of which look near-perfect on paper but lack any real connection to the role. Recruiters are seeing candidates who can't recall which jobs they applied to, interview no-shows, and a general decline in the signal-to-noise ratio of the inbox.
The applications surge isn't 184 highly-motivated, well-tailored candidates fighting for one role. It's 184 applications, of which maybe 20 are genuinely considered, of which maybe 5 are well-written. The competitive set you're actually in is much smaller than the headline number.
An AI vs. AI arms race
Faced with the volume, employers have responded the only way they could: with more automation. Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) have long scanned for keywords and filtered out less relevant applications. Now they're being augmented with AI that evaluates context, tone, and inferred intent. By the end of 2025, an estimated 83% of companies were using AI to screen resumes, and 99% of Fortune 500 companies use ATS as a first filter.
So the modern application has to clear two AI gates before reaching a human: the ATS reading your resume against the job description, and increasingly, an AI-driven candidate ranking layer on top. The gate that used to be the hardest — getting attention from a busy recruiter — now comes after the AI has already filtered the inbox down to a manageable shortlist.
The implication for candidates is counterintuitive. The opportunity isn't to write the most polished resume; it's to write one that does two things at once. Pass the AI screen with strong, role-relevant keywords. And then read authentically enough that the human reviewer — having been handed a curated shortlist — sees something they actually want to talk to.
What to do if you're the one applying
The wrong response to "184 applications per ad" is to apply 184 times yourself. That just adds you to the AI-spam pile. The right response is more counterintuitive: apply less, but make each application count.
Strategy 01
Apply to fewer roles, but apply much harder
The job seekers who land roles in this environment aren't sending 80 applications a week. They're sending 5–10, deeply tailored, with specific, role-relevant evidence in the resume and cover letter. The bar to clear isn't "submit an application." The bar is "be one of the 5 well-written applications out of 184."
That's a far easier bar than competing against 184 generic ones. Volume is the trap. Effort is the moat.
Strategy 02
Skip the easy-apply spray
SEEK Quick Apply, LinkedIn Easy Apply, and similar one-click application paths are exactly where the AI-spam volume goes. If you can apply in three clicks, so can everyone else. Roles that require a tailored cover letter or a structured application form attract dramatically fewer applicants — often a tenth of the volume — and your odds of being seriously considered go up accordingly.
Strategy 03
Get to a human before the AI does
Find the hiring manager or someone on the team. LinkedIn message. Mutual connection. Mention you're applying. This is the single highest-leverage thing you can do in a high-volume market because it short-circuits the entire AI-screening process. A human who's expecting your application reads it. A human who isn't, doesn't.
Strategy 04
Use AI for research, not for writing
The candidates winning right now aren't the ones with the polished AI-written cover letter. They're the ones using AI to research the company deeply — recent news, leadership changes, product launches, sector pressures — and then writing the application themselves with that context loaded in. The AI is a research assistant, not a ghostwriter.
Strategy 05
Make sure your resume actually represents you
This is the foundation. If your resume is a generic template stuffed with vague duties, no quantified achievements, and the same buzzwords every other applicant is using ("leverage," "passionate about driving," "spearheaded") — you're invisible at 184-applications-per-ad volume. The roles you want are not won on the strength of how many applications you submit. They're won on the strength of the document an actual person eventually reads.
The bigger picture
The hiring market has changed structurally, not temporarily. Application volumes are at record highs across virtually every Australian state and industry, and the trend has been one-directional for over three years. Even if the economy improves, AI-assisted application has become a permanent feature of how candidates compete, and employers won't be giving back the AI-screening tools they've adopted to manage the flood.
For job seekers, the implication is uncomfortable but clear. The old game — apply broadly, hope something lands — is now actively counterproductive. Every generic AI-assisted application you send goes into the same pile as the other 180. The new game is narrower, deeper, and more deliberate.
The candidates winning aren't out-applying the AI spam. They're stepping out of it — five well-written applications a week to roles they're actually qualified for, with documents that read like a person wrote them.
That's where the leverage is now. And in a market where 184 applications fight for one role, the leverage is everything.
Standing out at 184-to-1
Your resume needs to be one of the 5 worth reading. Not one of the 180.
In high-volume markets, the work that wins is the work that obviously wasn't AI-generated. We interview you for an hour, draw out the achievements that matter, and write a document by hand — calibrated to your level, your sector, and the language your target employers actually respond to. No AI. No offshore. No templates. 4.8 on Google. Trading since 2016.
