This article highlights another new paper from the Jobs and Skill Australia (JSA), just published this month. Entitled ‘Emerging roles’ it seeks to “identify and showcase trends in the evolving Australian labour market. The paper also provides intelligence on market demand, skills composition required by employers, and other demographic characteristics to create a holistic picture of emerging roles.”
Just to be clear, emerging roles refer to those that have appeared in Australian job market data for the first time in recent years or are growing quickly from a small base.
On this site JSA has identified 37 emerging roles and four main themes. These themes are:
- Health, Care and Medical e.g. health tech, medical tech
- Data and Technologies e.g. cybersecurity
- Net Zero e.g. sustainability, clean energy
- Science and Engineering e.g. biological and chemical science, engineering.
It also takes a look at Artificial Intelligence.
Let’s look briefly at each of the 4 themes in turn.
Health, Care and Medical
The Emerging Roles report notes that, according to the 2021 Census, there are 1.7 million people working in the Health Care and Social Assistance industry in Australia. In addition, employment in this area has grown by 26% over the past five years, and over the next 5 years the projected growth is 16%. Most workers have tertiary qualifications, either university (45%) or VET (35%). There are also 13 emerging roles, including community mental health workers, mental health practitioners and allied health assistants.
Data and Technologies
The paper notes that the adaptation of data and technology is changing the nature of the way we work and is creating new types of jobs. Two roles associated with emerging cutting-edge technologies were identified:
- Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Engineer and Quantum Computing Scientist.
Cloud Developers, Solutions Architects and Automation Engineers were reported as being significant emerging roles.
Net Zero
This has 9 emerging roles and these predominantly cover those associated with sustainability, green economy and clean energy. The emerging roles include electric vehicle technicians, sustainability consultants and battery design specialists.
Science and Engineering
Here, there are 5 emerging roles, many of which involve duties and areas of expertise that have applications in a wide range of fields such as Health, Care and Medical, and Data and Technologies. Reliability Engineers are a biggie.
In summary, emerging roles were represented comprehensively in the paper, and can be seen diagrammatically here:
Finally, the JSA’s paper notes that:
“Emerging roles aid our understanding of evolving skill needs in the labour market and the changing landscape of Australian jobs. By continuously monitoring these shifts and offering detailed skills analysis, Jobs and Skills Australia hopes to assist in shaping our education and training systems to meet demand for specific skills and support Australia’s adaptation to economic and technological change.”
