SEEK Employment Report - July
*Applications per job ad are recorded with a one-month lag. Data shown in this report refers to June data.
AI Insights:
References to AI skills in job ads have grown 60.4% in the past year, though are only present in 2.1% of total ads.
References to Agentic AI and AI Ethics and Governance have more than doubled in the past year.
National Insights:
Job ads continue to decline, but the rate of decline has slowed over recent months, down 0.4% m/m.
Applications per job ad have risen consistently since January, and are now higher than at any other point on record.
State and Territory Insights:
The national decline in July was driven primarily by weaker demand in New South Wales, which fell 0.7% m/m.
Western Australia, South Australia and Victoria all recorded a rise in job ad volumes m/m, with Victoria recording its first monthly rise in 12 months.
Industry Insights:
A growing number of industries recorded a rise in job ad volumes in July, with Engineering, Construction and Mining, Resources & Energy seeing the greatest demand.
Job ads for roles in data centres have doubled over the past year, notably in South Australia where they have surged 248.3% y/y.
SEEK Chief Economist, Dr Blair Chapman says:
“Job ads are declining at a slower pace and across a slightly narrower range of industries. There is notable, sustained growth in the large Construction and trade-based industries, with rising demand specifically for roles in the planning, construction and maintenance of data centres.
“South Australia has emerged as a powerhouse in this space, with data centre job ads more than tripling over the past year and driving sustained annual job ad growth in the state for the past eighteen months.
“Outside the trades and infrastructure-related industries, other pockets of growth point to some greater-than-usual seasonal hiring trends. Hospitality & Tourism jobs have risen in most states month-on-month, while a jump in Sports & Recreation signals faster hiring activity for the sports and fitness sector, than we would usually see at this time of year.
“AI’s influence is beginning to show in the labour market, although its impact remains modest so far. The clearest signs are in the changing composition of demand, particularly for roles with high or medium automation exposure. At the same time, broader macroeconomic pressures, including high operating costs and cost-of-living pressures, continue to weigh on most sectors.”
AI Insights
Demand for AI-related skills has increased 3.1% m/m, and 60.4% y/y. While demand continues to rise, the rate of growth has slowed from 88.1% y/y in January.
Just 2.1% of total job ads on SEEK reference AI skills, but the share is rising within Advertising, Arts & Media. AI-related skills are mentioned in 5.1% of job ads in this industry making it the third most likely to mention AI behind Information & Communication Technology (13.5%) and Marketing & Communications (7.3%).
Figure 1: The SEEK AI Gauge – Measure of job ads that include AI-related keywords.
Ad volumes for roles with low automation exposure scores, including trades workers, childcare workers and caregivers, have declined 2.3% y/y. Volumes for roles with medium- and high-level automation exposure scores have fallen further, by 5.9% and 12.3% y/y respectively, as hirers reduce hiring activity within the Professional Services and Public sectors.
Figure 2: Annual job ad decline by average task automation score - low, medium and high AI automation.
References to Agentic AI in job ads, one of the new categories of AI and AI-skills, has recorded significant growth over the past year, rising 178.4%.As AI becomes more embedded in workflows, demand for AI Ethics & Governance experience has also increased, up 122.5% y/y. Computer Vision and Generative AI remain among the larger skills categories referenced in job ads, although growth has been more subdued, at 23.3% and 3.3% y/y respectively.
Figure 3: Annual growth in references to key AI-related skills in job ads
National Insights
Job ads declined 0.4% in July, slowing the rate of decline over the past four months. Job ads are now 6.0% lower y/y.
Applications per job ad have increased for the past seven months as job ads declined. After rising 1.4% in June, they are now at their highest level on record.
Figure 4: National SEEK job ad percentage change m/m
State and Territory Insights
New South Wales drove the overall decline in July, with job ads down 0.7% m/m and demand falling for 12 consecutive months. Job ads declined across all sectors except Construction, where volumes rose 0.5% m/m, including a 0.6% increase in Trades & Services roles. Hospitality & Tourism recorded the greatest growth for the state, jumping 2.8% from June.
Victoria recorded its first monthly rise in job ads in a year, up 0.5%. with demand increasing notably for Trades & Services (2.5% m/m) and Hospitality & Tourism (4.7% m/m) workers.
South Australia has joined Western Australia to record both monthly and annual job ad growth, up 0.4% m/m and y/y respectively. Annual growth was driven by rising ad volumes in some Public Sector industries such as Healthcare & Medical (4.5% y/y), but more prominently in large infrastructure industries such as Mining, Resources & Energy (20.2% y/y) and Manufacturing, Transport & Logistics (10.1% y/y).
The territories continued to record sluggish ad volumes. The Northern Territory declined across all sectors m/m, while the ACT recorded growth only in the Construction sector*, driven by rising demand in Trades & Services (0.9% m/m) and Design & Architecture (10.0% m/m).
Ad volumes remained steady in Tasmania, with its resilience attributable to significant growth across a handful of industries including Mining, Resources and Energy (56.8% y/y), Accounting (15.7% y/y) and Manufacturing, Transport & Logistics (7.8% y/y).
*Construction serves as both an industry classification and sector category.
Figure 5: State and territory job ad growth/decline comparing i) July 2026 to June 2026 (m/m) and ii) July 2026 to July 2025 (y/y).
Industry Insights
Industry performance in July was mixed, but several large industries performed slightly better than in June.
A modest 0.9% rise in job ads in Trades & Services, the largest hiring industry, helped moderate the overall decline. Demand for these roles grew in every state except the Northern Territory (-1.2% m/m), while Tasmania was unchanged.
Hospitality & Tourism roles, which had declined for the previous ten months, has now recorded three months of growth. Job ads rose 2.1% m/m in July, with growth across New South Wales, Tasmania, South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia.
Construction (1.3%), Mining, Resources & Energy (1.0%) and Sales (0.4%) were the next largest industries to record monthly growth. Sport & Recreation, a relatively small industry, marked the swiftest increase, jumping 3.0% m/m.
The Public and Professional Services sectors accounted for much of the monthly decline, with job ads falling in Healthcare & Medical (-0.5% m/m), Government & Defence (-2.0% m/m) and Information & Communication Technology(-0.9% m/m).
Annually, most industries have recorded a decline in job ad numbers, with notable exceptions; Engineering (12.3% y/y), Construction (12.2% y/y) and Mining, Resources & Energy (10.8% y/y).
Figure 6: Annual job ad trend by sector
Some of this growth can be attributed to large data centre projects driving demand for roles such as Data Technicians, Project Managers, Engineers and HVAC Technicians across the planning, construction or maintenance phases of data centre development.
Over the past 12 months demand for roles that reference “data centre” has more than doubled, rising 109.5% y/y, particularly across the eastern seaboard.
Victoria has recorded significantly strong demand for workers in these roles, up 127.6% y/y. In New South Wales, growth for these roles was more delayed but is now accelerating, rising 107.3% y/y.
Demand growth has been strongest in South Australia, where ads have surged 248.3% y/y, driven by a concentrated wave of new projects in the state.
Figure 7: National growth in Data Centre jobs over time
Figure 8: National SEEK job ad percentage change by industry (July 2026 vs June 2026) – Ordered by job ad volume
ENDS
Banner image credit: Ollie Craig.
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.