The National Skills Commission has added 10 more IT-related occupations to its list of skills facing national shortages, once again highlighting the need to train more technology talent in Australia.
Web developers, database admins, and business analysts are now among jobs on the Commission’s official skills shortage list which informs Australia's migration and skills development policies.
The updated list also includes network engineering, adminstration, and analyst roles along with quality assurance and testing, and programming occupations.
Most of the IT-related Australian and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations (ANZSCO) jobs now have either recognised national shortages or are expected to see strong future demand with cyber security professionals and software engineers especially in-demand.
ACS CEO Chris Vein said it was important to recognise that IT jobs underpin a developed economy.
“The jobs on this list are not just in technology companies, but across all business and communities,” he said.
“IT is essential for industries such as agriculture, resources and tourism, and it’s critical all parts of Australia have enough technology workers to keep their local economies running.
“One of the quickest ways of addressing our skills shortage is harnessing our national assets, particularly Australia’s educated, flexible and diverse workforce, through upskilling workers and boosting the industry’s diversity.”
Local tech giant Atlassian this week set out on a literal recruitment drive to find tech talent for its Australian workforce.
IT Jobs added to the national skills shortage list in 2022 (with ANZSCO code):
- ICT Business Analyst (261111)
- Systems Analyst (261112)
- Web Developer (261212)
- Analyst Programmer (261311)
- Database Administrator (262111)
- Computer Network and Systems Engineer (263111)
- Network Administrator (263112)
- Network Analyst (263113)
- ICT Quality Assurance Engineer (263211)
- ICT Systems Test Engineer (263213)
Project manager was the only IT ANSZCO-coded job that was found to be in shortage last year but not in 2022.
All up, the Skills Commission added an extra 129 occupations to this year's shortage list, something Skills Minister Brendan O’Connor said showed an economy-wide need for improving the country’s talent pipeline.
“Registered nurses, the tech industry, machine operators, baggage handlers, dentists – wherever you look across the economy and labour market we see acute skills shortages,” he told a press conference on Thursday.
“We need to therefore ensure that when we invest in education and training we do so with a mind to existing and future skills shortages.”
O’Connor said the government needed to be “much more sensitive” to the way the economy and workforce is changing, adding that it needs to “provide the right advice to the VET sector and higher education” to make sure people are being trained for the jobs of tomorrow.
The government's first order of business when parliament started sitting in July was to create a new body for tackling the skills crisis.
Jobs and Skills Australia will replace the National Skills Commission and is tasked with keeping the government up-to-date on the labour market along with forecasting future needs.
The government is leaning on vocational training to address the skills shortage and is planning to create 450,000 fee-free TAFE places.
But O’Connor added that skilled migration is just as important for addressing workforce shortages – though he recognises it’s no panacea, saying skilled migration “is a part of the solution but it’s not the only part, it’s not a binary choice”.
During the Skills Summit, the government announced a raise of the migration cap to 195,000 per year of which 142,400 will be given to skilled workers.
