JSA released its annual report, Pathways to Success, on 20 October, with a media release whose headline tied skills to the rise of AI. A week later it put out a short statement: media reporting over the weekend had said the report included a figure of 139,000 jobs that could be lost to the impact of AI over the next ten years. JSA’s reply was direct.
These statements do not accurately reflect the findings and analysis contained within the Jobs and Skills Report.Jobs and Skills Australia, statement of 27 October 2026
The statement does not name the reports it was answering, and neither do we. What matters for anyone who read one is what the number is, and what the report does and does not say about AI.
What the 139,000 actually measures
The report’s employment projections, produced with Victoria University, have a
baseline built on recent trends in who studies what. Alongside it, JSA runs an
“unconstrained supply” scenario, which the report describes as
effectively creating an estimate of what supply would look like if it conformed to labour demand
.
The 139,000 is the gap between the two at Skill Level 1, the occupations whose main pathway is
a bachelor’s degree or higher. In JSA’s own words:
The report presented a modelled scenario showing that if people made education and career choices according to labour market demand, over the next decade we’d see 106,000 more Skill Level 3 and 4 workers (e.g. trades and technical) and 139,000 less Skill Level 1 workers (e.g. professionals), compared to the baseline projected growth.
The scenario against the baseline, 2026 to 2036
| Occupations | Workers against baseline | Change on baseline |
|---|---|---|
| Skill Level 1 (bachelor degree or higher) | 139,300 fewer | about −2.1% |
| Skill Level 3 | 42,600 more | +1.9% |
| Skill Level 4 | 63,500 more | about +1.6% |
From the Jobs and Skills Report 2026, section 2.1.1.1, printed page 27. The report gives no figures for Skill Levels 2 and 5 in this passage, so we have not netted the rows. 42,600 plus 63,500 is 106,100, the report’s “around 106,000”.
Nothing in that table is a job disappearing. It compares two projections of growth. The
report’s baseline has Professionals, the largest occupation group, growing by
over 1.03 million persons (25.6%) to 2036
.
In the scenario, Skill Level 1 occupations take a smaller share of total growth, 46.9 per
cent against 52.6 per cent in the baseline, and JSA’s statement makes the same point:
In this scenario, growth in Skill Level 1 occupations is still projected to account for 47% of total employment growth.
The finding the report draws from it is about training, not technology: persistent unmet
demand for Certificate III and IV pathways.
Where AI sits in the report
JSA’s statement says The scenario does not consider the impact of artificial intelligence, geopolitical conflict or other similar disruptions.
The report itself says so about the baseline the scenario is measured against, in a box
titled Consideration of the impact of AI in the employment outlook
.A
Exhibit A · from the source
The box ends with a forward-looking line: JSA will continue to use scenario analysis to examine how alternative futures could affect Australia's workforce needs.
It gives no date and names no AI scenario.
AI is not absent from the report. It runs through the opening chapter and chapter 4, on skills pathways, as evidence about use and exposure rather than as a projection of jobs. Three passages carry the weight.
How many use it
The report cites Roy Morgan estimating 13.6 million Australians are engaging with AI tools in their daily lives
,
with use at 74 per cent among 25 to 34 year olds and 72 per cent among 35 to 49 year olds.
Change, not disruption
From JSA’s own Generative AI Capacity Study: AI has a far greater potential to augment rather than automate occupations
.
What has happened so far
The report says monitoring by the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations
found AI has not caused significant disruption to the labour market, with only a slight softening in employment for AI exposed occupations
.
From the Jobs and Skills Report 2026, printed page 9 (section 1.2.1). We covered the first edition of the DEWR monitoring in July.
Where the report does look at which degrees AI may reshape, it names Society and Culture,
and Management and Commerce, and says occupations in accounting, banking and financial services, and administration and
human resources are highly exposed to augmentation with medium exposure to automation,
which suggests some tasks may be displaced
.
Tasks, not a head count.
Our view
The correction is right, and the misreading was easy to make. The 139,000 sits in a
report whose launch release led on AI and said JSA has reported that 13.6 million Australians are using AI tools in their daily lives
,
a figure the report itself credits to Roy Morgan. A large number near the word AI got read as
an AI number. It is a number about the gap between what students choose and what employers
need, and its message is that Australia is short of trades and technical workers.
The harder point is the one in Box 4. JSA’s national ten-year employment projections do not explicitly model AI. That is a defensible modelling choice while the measured effect so far is slight, as the report’s own evidence says, and the report is candid about it. But it means the projections cannot answer the question most readers now bring to them, and the report’s own AI evidence is about use and task exposure, not jobs. Until JSA publishes the scenario analysis its box points to, this report offers no projection of AI’s effect on jobs, and any figure quoted as one did not come from it.