Deloitte is planning to bring 500 jobs to South Australia as it prepares to open its Australian Centre for Innovation and Technology in Adelaide.

The consultancy firm said it will have work for people with skills in automation, analytics, cyber security, and financial audit services when it starts servicing local industry later this year.

South Australian Premier Steven Marshall said Deloitte’s move into Adelaide will help improve the state’s technological standings for local industries, specifically mentioning defence, space, healthcare, and the public sector.

“The expansion will mean more jobs for South Australia, tapping into our talent market and pipeline of skilled workers that are available to take up roles in cyber security and data science in our state,” Marshall said.

Hendri Mentz, Managing Partner of Deloitte’s Adelaide office, said the consultancy picked Adelaide for its Australian Centre for Innovation and Technology because of “exceptional talent” in the area.

“This is about harnessing the technology and innovation ecosystem in Adelaide to develop new offerings for the Australian market and then delivering on these offerings,” he said.

Deloitte is just the latest consultancy to call Adelaide home as a bunch of firms have rushed to announce their move into the City of Churches over the last 12 months.

The announcement of each move is naturally punctuated by an-eye catching number of jobs the consultancy commits to bringing into SA.

Last September, Accenture promised 2,000 jobs with the announcement of its Adelaide Hub.

Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC) offered 300 jobs when announcing its “onshore delivery centre” in April.

And MTX said it would bring 500 jobs when saying Adelaide would become home to its Asia-Pacific headquarters in May.

The sudden incursion of international consultancy firms promising technological services fits with the state government’s desire to make Adelaide a technology hub – something it looked to in 2018 after becoming South Australia’s first Liberal government since 2002.

Since gaining power, Marshall’s government has been in charge of reinvigorating the old Royal Adelaide Hospital site with innovation precinct Lot Fourteen which is now home to the Australian Space Agency, the Australian Institute of Machine Learning, a host of local startup businesses, and ACS’ Adelaide office.

Still, there are concerns that South Australia will struggle to keep up with the demand for local technology talent as it attracts more businesses.

ACS Australia’s Digital Pulse 2021 forecast growth in the state’s IT workforce is set to slow below the national growth rate over the next five years.

And the state – which Marshall proudly claims is employing more people than ever – performs poorly in national employment figures with participation rate, underemployment, and its employment to population ratio among the worst in the country, according to the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) jobs figures.

But there is a shining light as by the end of 2020, SA had bucked a decades-long trend of losing migrants interstate, seeing positive net interstate migration in the December 2020 and March 2021 quarters, according to the ABS.