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Nearly every job in Australia will be transformed by technological change, with some roles becoming obsolete, new research has found.

The report by investment bank Barrenjoey found only one in 1,000 Australian jobs will likely remain untouched by technology and artificial intelligence (AI), marking the “most comprehensive workforce transformation” in modern history.
Johnathan McMenamin, head of economic forecasts at Barrenjoey and one of the report’s authors, said the numbers were “incredibly significant”.

“That means that it’s very broad base. It’s going to affect the way we work right across the workplace,” he told SBS News.

Some jobs will change, some will ‘fade’
To examine the role of AI and technology in the workplace, the report analysed their impacts on two areas: skills and tasks that can be substituted by technology and those that can be augmented by it.
McMenamin said augmentation was when technology contributed to better outcomes and productivity.
The report found one in two jobs face “medium-to-high augmentation”, while one in three face the risk of being replaced by technology.
“That means that we are more geared towards augmentation than we are towards substitution,” McMenamin said.

“We believe that the threat to the workforce is not through a mass unemployment phase. This isn’t a doomsday prediction like you might have seen elsewhere; rather, it’s a more balanced outcome that we anticipate for the workforce.”

The results align with a federal government report in August, which found generative AI is likely to augment the way we work rather than replace jobs.
While about 30 per cent of the workforce have jobs with high exposure to augmentation, the August report found only 4 per cent of jobs are at risk of being automated by generative AI.
The Barrenjoey report indicated that nearly 10.9 per cent of the workforce still faces a high risk of replacement, while 22.3 per cent are at medium risk.
Just over seven per cent of the workforce is highly exposed to augmentation, while an additional 38.4 per cent has medium exposure.
“What will happen is those substitutable occupations, they will either completely transform in terms of what they look like, or you’ll see their role in the workforce just fade over time,” McMenamin said.

“It won’t be an immediate overnight thing, but they will fade.”

Jobs with the most and least risks
Generally, labourers, machine operators, sales workers and general clerks are the jobs most at risk of substitution and obsoletion, according to the report.
The research also reveals that consumer staples retail has the highest substitution risk among Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) industries, with more than 125,000 checkout operators and 560,000 sales assistants nationwide still performing tasks that could be automated.

Commercial cleaners, sales assistants in general and specialty retail stores, kitchen hands, couriers and postal carriers, truck drivers, and workers in structural steel and welding trades are the next groups most at risk.

The diversified consumer services sector, which includes jobs such as tax preparation, legal advice, education, and home security, had the lowest substitution rating.
The life sciences tools and services sector, which includes medical and laboratory scientists, was the next lowest.
The report also indicated that workers employed by a real estate investment trust generally had less exposure to technology compared to employees in other industries.
“The things that are most substitutable are those things that are very routine. These are tasks and skills that we’ve been replacing for a long period of time,” McMenamin said.

The report identified the five industries with the highest proportion of highly substitutable workers as insurance, hotels and restaurants, beverages, consumer staples, and food products.

Which jobs are going to transform?
On the other hand, McMenamin says the jobs that are likely to be augmented by technology are “tasks or areas of the workplace that haven’t typically been disrupted by technology in the past” and often “cognitive”.
“Now professionals are more exposed to technology, whereas previously it was machine operators and labourers and clerical people, and now it’s moving into a newer group,” he said.

The top five ASX industries that stand out for augmentation potential include:

  • Insurance
  • Health care technology
  • Software
  • Interactive media and services
  • IT services
McMenamin said the key takeaway from the findings was that workers “have to adapt”.
“This is a general-purpose technology, one that will change the way that we work across the workforce, just like when computers came in or when the internet was invented,” he said.
“Everyone thinks doomsday, but I think ultimately what we know is that productivity drives increasing living standards.”
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