Until AI can hold your hand or a hammer, it’s not taking the jobs Australia needs most.

The 2025 Jobs and Skills Report tells us that service industries like healthcare, retail and hospitality have been carrying almost 90 percent of job growth for the last ten years. And according to Cliff Bingham, Assistant Secretary, Labour Market Research and Analysis at Jobs and Skills Australia, the demand for hands-on roles will continue. 

Speaking on a panel on the future of work and skills at the FW Leadership Summit, Bingham said the industries most in need of workers across the country include healthcare, care and construction. That is to say: roles that can’t be done from your living room.

He is not concerned about AI leading to job losses. The predicament we face, in Bingham’s mind, is how do we get young people excited about this kind of work? 

“Roles where it’s very hard for AI to have a large influence on – building your house or giving care to your elderly parent, or the like – they’re not well suited to hybrid work,” he said. 

“I worry about kids coming through, post-COVID, and saying, ‘Well, my Mum and Dad can work remotely and your Mum and Dad can’t’. Okay, so which jobs are these? And kids voting with their feet, in terms of their future career aspirations, and gravitating towards roles that offer hybrid, that offer remote work.” 

“I think job titles may not actually change an awful lot. But the nature of those roles is going to change a lot.”

Flexible working arrangements aside, of course, not everyone will have their heart set on nursing, aged-care or plumbing as a career. But even in corporate industries and roles, Bingham says that the data tells a different story to the headlines. Roles will not disappear en masse.

“I think job titles may not actually change an awful lot,” he tells the FW Summit. “But I think the nature of those roles is going to change a lot.” 

According to Bingham, looking ahead, it’s not likely that many jobs will be fully automated by AI. Rather, they’ll experience what he calls AI “augmentation”. People remain in roles while using AI to their professional advantage. And across industries, Bingham says employers are clear-eyed about where that advantage ends.

“All the employers we spoke to about this through last year’s study kept coming back to these higher order human skills – that the AI can only take you so far,” he says. 

“I now, as an employer, think even more sharply about initiative, I think even more sharply about critical thinking and problem-solving. I think even more sharply around leadership. What is the human dimension that AI will not be able to get to?” 

FW Digital Director, Mel Lee, opened the Summit with a keynote sharing a similar sentiment. 

“AI is a tool,” said Lee. “AI is what enables humans to do faster and more efficient work. It’s not something that we want to replace ourselves with. It’s something that we want to use in what we do every day.”

During her keynote, Lee also noted that, like most of Australia, she starts her day with coffee. On the morning of the Summit, she, like the majority of the audience, contributed to our country’s multibillion-dollar coffee industry by getting hers made by a barista. A small moment that points to a bigger question Bingham keeps returning to.

“I do worry about some of the sectors where you really do have to be in person to do it,” he says. “Mel talked about baristas before. How does the market evolve to continue to make those jobs attractive into the future?”