SCIENCE OF JOBS EXPANSION

THE professional, scientific and technical services sector has doubled its share of the workforce in the past 30 years, representing the largest percentage increase of all employment sectors.

Government report Australian Jobs 2018 reveals it accounted for just 4 per cent of workers in 1987 but this has now reached 8 per cent – equal to the education and training sector. Only healthcare and social assistance (13 per cent), retail (10 per cent) and construction (9 per cent) have a larger share of the workforce.

Federal Government data projects an extra 29,900 roles will be created for information and communication technology (ICT) professionals in the five years to May, 2022, an increase of 12.3 per cent.

The growth is expected to be dominated by software and applications programmers, with 15,100 more roles created (up 14.5 per cent). The figures also forecast a need for 13,700 more engineering professionals (up 9.4 per cent), 11,600 more natural and physical science professionals (10.1 per cent) and 6700 more advertising and marketing professionals (10.5 per cent).

Trend forecaster and speaker Michael McQueen says some occupations within the professional, scientific and technical sector will grow stronger than others including ICT as automation and artificial intelligence (AI) becomes mainstream. However, he says cloud computing roles will also grow.

Dr David Howard (pictured), research scientist in CSIRO Data61’s Robotics and Autonomous Systems Group, believes new technology will create more jobs than it will make redundant.

“There is going to be some reskilling and upskilling of the workforce but this is something we have seen throughout history,” he says.

“(Robotics and artificial intelligence are) going to spearhead a lot of future Australian jobs.”

He says when a new robot is created, it requires workers to maintain it and analyse the data it collects.