SEEK Employment Report - August
*Applications per job ad are recorded with a one-month lag. Data shown in this report refers to July data.
AI Insights:
References to AI skills are present in 2.3% of total job ads, and 3.0% in New South Wales.
Job ads that mention AI-related skills have risen 3.9% m/m and are 66.2% higher y/y.
Agentic AI skills are among the most in-demand AI skills, rising 185.3% y/y.
National Insights:
Job ads rose for the first time in over a year, up 0.5% from July.
Applications per job ad continue to climb, up 0.4%, and are again at peak levels.
State and Territory Insights:
All states rose m/m, led by Victoria where volumes increased 1.1%.
Only Western Australia has recorded a rise in job ads y/y, up 1.8% from August 2025.
Industry Insights:
A 3.6% rise in Hospitality & Tourism led overall job ad growth m/m.
The Industrial and Construction sectors are experiencing the most annual growth, with Engineering, Mining, Resources & Energy and Trades & Services among the six industries to record y/y rises.
SEEK Chief Economist, Dr Blair Chapman says:
“For the first time since mid-2025, demand for workers rose modestly, with broad-based growth in Victoria the major contributor.
“The large hiring industries of Trades & Services, Healthcare & Medical and Manufacturing, Transport & Logistics all posted solid monthly gains nationally, but it was the 3.6% jump in Hospitality & Tourism ad volumes that really moved the dial.
“As our data is seasonally adjusted, the significant rise in Hospitality & Tourism demonstrates unexpectedly high demand, over and above what we would expect at this time of year as venues look toward the warmer months.
“Even as job ads turn around, applications per ad have not fallen. They rose again month-on-month to peak levels, highlighting the continued fierce level of competition for the jobs on offer.
“Separately, demand for AI-related skills also continues to rise, with Agentic AI and Ethics and Governance skills both more than doubling year-on-year.”
AI Insights
The rise in demand for AI-related skills picked up pace in August, up 3.9% m/m and 66.2% y/y (though this is slower than the 88.0% y/y recorded in January).
The majority of AI mentions are within Information & Communication Technology, where references appear in 14.1% of job ads, followed by Marketing & Communications (7.9%) and Advertising, Arts & Media (5.6%).
Figure 1: The SEEK AI Gauge – Measure of job ads that include AI-related keywords, shown as an index
Ad volumes for roles across all automation exposure scores – low, medium and high – have declined y/y, though the decline for occupations with low scores is down just 1.8% y/y, compared to those with high scores, a much smaller proportion of total job ads, which have fallen 12.3% y/y. These types of occupations, which include roles such as Bakers, Travel Attendants and Florists, among many others, tend to include manual or technical tasks not currently easy to automate.
Figure 2: Annual job ad decline by average task automation score - low, medium and high AI automation
Generative AI skills remain one of the most commonly referenced AI skillsets in job ads, growing 15.5% since August 2025. Agentic AI skills are some of the fastest growing, up 185.3%, and skills relating to AI Ethics & Governance have also more than doubled y/y, rising 153.6%.
Figure 3: Annual growth in references to key AI-related skills in job ads
National Insights
Job ads rose for the first time since June 2025, up 0.5%, overturning 12 months of consistently falling volumes. The annual rate of decline has slowed to -4.5%, after two months at -5.2%.
Applications per job ad have risen since January, and are 1.7% higher y/y, taking them to peak levels once again.
Figure 4: National SEEK job ad percentage change m/m
State and Territory Insights
Rising demand for workers in Victoria led the rest of the country in August, with volumes up 1.1% from July, the sharpest growth for the state in over four years. The increase in demand was broad-based, with notable rises in Hospitality & Tourism (4.5%), Trades & Services (3.2%) and Manufacturing, Transport & Logistics (2.1%).
While more subdued, the 0.6% rise in ad volumes in New South Wales was also the largest recorded in that state since mid-2022. Hospitality & Tourism similarly drove the overall monthly growth, where demand for Front Office & Guest services staff rose 8% m/m and Bar & Beverage Staff jumped 6% m/m.
Tasmania recorded a 0.7% uptick in job ads m/m, thanks to solid rising demand in some of the largest industries in the state Trades & Services (2.3%), Hospitality & Tourism (2.0%) and Healthcare & Medical (0.7%).
Western Australia is the only state to record annual job ad growth, up 1.8% y/y, thanks to continued solid growth in leading industries Mining, Resources & Energy (13.0% y/y) and Manufacturing, Transport & Logistics (11.2%).
The territories continue their decline in job ads, with the Australian Capital Territory down 0.4% m/m and the Northern Territory down 0.1% m/m, while ad volumes remained stagnant in both Queensland and South Australia m/m.
Figure 5: State and territory job ad growth/decline comparing i) August 2026 to July 2026 (m/m) and ii) August 2026 to August 2025 (y/y)
Industry Insights
As well as the Construction and Industrial sectors, the Consumer Services sector has been experiencing growth over the past few months, due mainly to substantial rising demand within Hospitality & Tourism.
In August, ad volumes in Hospitality & Tourism jumped a significant 3.6% m/m and are up 6.2% q/q after seasonal adjustment. This highlights exceptional demand in comparison to previous years in almost all occupations, including Waiting Staff (11% q/q), Front Office & Guest Services Staff (7% q/q) and Chefs/Cooks (6% q/q).
The other industries driving total job ads upwards m/m were the largest hirers: Trades & Services (1.1% m/m) and Healthcare & Medical (0.8% m/m).
Most industries within the Professional Services and Public Sectors declined m/m, with some exceptions in Banking & Financial Services (1.5% m/m), Human Resources & Recruitment (0.4% m/m) and Marketing & Communications (0.2% m/m).
Accounting (-1.5% m/m) and Education & Training (-1.0% m/m) were among the largest industries to record a monthly decline in August, followed by Community Services & Development (-0.8% m/m) and Information & Communication Technology (-0.5% m/m).
Annually, only a handful of industries are experiencing growth, and these are solidly within the Industrial and Construction sectors. Engineering roles have recorded the most consistent growth (14.3% y/y), followed by Mining, Resources & Energy (11.6% y/y) and Construction* (10.7% y/y).
*Construction is both a sector comprised of multiple industries and an industry classification.
Figure 8: National SEEK job ad percentage change by industry comparing i) August 2026to July2026 (m/m) and ii) August 2026 to August 2025 (y/y) – Ordered by job ad volume
Banner image credit: Andrea Piacquadio
More information about how the SEEK Employment Report is put together and the current data can be found here.
About the SEEK Employment Report
The SEEK Employment Report is Australia’s leading employment index and provides a comprehensive overview of the Australian Employment Marketplace. The report includes the SEEK Employment Index (SEI) which measures only new job ads posted within the reported month to provide a clean measure of demand for labour across all classifications.
To improve this index and continuously ensure its market accuracy, SEEK has implemented two main changes to the data within these reports since late 2025; i) Reporting on trend estimates rather than seasonally adjusted estimates from August 2025 onwards and ii) The inclusion of company listings in the SEI from November 2025.
The SEI may differ to the job ad count on SEEK’s website due to a number of factors including a) the trend adjustments applied to the SEI; and b) the exclusion of duplicated job ads from the SEI.
Caution is recommended when interpreting trend estimates during the COVID period as large month-to-month changes in variables generated multiple trend breaks.
The applications per ad index contains a series break at Jan 2016 when the calculation of this series changed from using gross variables (inclusive of all SEEK job ads) to net variables (removing duplicate job ads). This change has a negligible impact on recent data points, but caution is recommended when interpreting data immediately following the series break, and particularly in 2016 where growth rates have not been adjusted for the series break.
Disclaimer: The Data should be viewed and regarded as standalone information and should not be aggregated with any other information whether such information has been previously provided by SEEK Limited, ("SEEK").
The Data is given in summary form and whilst care has been taken in its preparation, SEEK makes no representations whatsoever about its completeness or accuracy. SEEK expressly bears no responsibility or liability for any reliance placed by you on the Data, or from the use of the Data by you.