Which Jobs Are in Demand for Australian Immigration: A Forecast Amid AI Disruption

Licensed trades (electricians, air conditioning technicians, plumbers), secondary school teachers, and healthcare workers are currently the strongest bets for Australian skilled migration, while entry-level IT roles and the subclass 189 pathway for IT occupations have landed in the risk zone as artificial intelligence reshapes hiring.

In short

• Since the 2024 financial year, subclass 189 invitations for IT specialists have dropped sharply, making the pathway unreliable for this occupation.
• For secondary school teachers, a realistic competitive EOI score is around 80, even though the formal threshold is lower.
• Demand for licensed electricians, plumbers, and air conditioning technicians is projected to grow 9–10% by 2035.
• Preparing documents entirely through ChatGPT without an agent regularly leads to refusals, which is especially damaging for student visas.
• Delaying an immigration strategy until passing a language test is risky: reworking the plan eats up roughly two years and can push a candidate past a visa’s age limits.

IT professionals: why this occupation landed in the risk zone

Information technology and everything tied to information media sit at the center of Australia’s job-cut risk zone: according to the forecast referenced in the source material, cuts in this field could be substantial. Long-term official ICT employment forecasts don’t fully line up with that estimate, so it’s worth checking current figures separately. Within IT itself, the picture is uneven: specialists who implement artificial intelligence across other industries and professions are expected to see growth of roughly 22.5%. That means the same broad professional group is pulling in two opposite directions at once.

The situation looks worst for entry-level, junior IT specialists. They get stuck in a loop: building experience requires a first job, but landing that first job is hard because AI now handles many of the tasks that used to train newcomers. Specialists who work on implementing AI themselves are in a better spot — though the same technology could eventually shrink their own roles too.

They get stuck in a loop: building experience requires a first job, but landing that first job is hard because AI now handles many of the tasks that used to train newcomers.

The effect on immigration is direct. Since the 2024 financial year, invitation numbers under the subclass 189 skilled migration pathway for IT specialists have dropped sharply compared with previous years, making 189 an unreliable route for this occupation. The occupation technically remains on the list open for applications, but the real number of 189 invitations for it is very low. A small number of invitations still come through under subclass 491, but that’s a narrow window rather than a main route. Given this, IT specialists are encouraged to look at alternative sectors of the economy — construction, for example — though the right choice depends on each applicant’s circumstances.

Teachers: why the education sector still needs people despite cuts

The education sector overall is shrinking by 3.3%, but that decline doesn’t touch secondary school teachers: class sizes aren’t dropping, and replacing a classroom teacher with AI isn’t on the horizon. The cuts are concentrated elsewhere — mainly in higher education, not schools.

At the same time, Australia is recording a teacher shortage: the number of schools keeps growing, natural population growth continues, and demand for teachers holds steady as a result. That makes education one of the sectors worth considering as an alternative to shrinking fields.

The formal Expression of Interest (EOI) threshold is 65 points, but in practice real competitiveness and a realistic shot at an invitation require a higher score — roughly 80 and up. Teachers sit above construction trades in official priority, so once a candidate clears the points bar, the odds of a quick invitation are fairly strong.

How to qualify as a teacher with a non-Australian degree

The rules require Australian education at bachelor’s level or higher, specifically in teaching. If someone’s original degree is in a different field, a master’s in education through an accredited program can establish secondary teacher qualification — the odds here are described as reasonable.

Choosing the right program matters enormously: to work in Australian schools, colleges, and universities, only a program accredited specifically for teachers will do. Programs that train people for related consulting roles in education don’t lead to teaching, even if the name sounds similar. Applicants need to check the list of accredited institutions and look at admission requirements for each master’s program individually, since they vary significantly.

Studying in Australia also comes with a points advantage: migration points add up for Australian study — often for regional study — and for English proficiency, which gets built up along the way whether a student plans for it or not.

The student pathway to a teaching visa: what to know

A student visa requires a minimum of 20 hours of in-person study per week, but in practice universities are increasingly shifting to hybrid formats: some run a 70/30 split between in-person and online, others 50/50. Some subjects are delivered as recordings — the same lectures posted online count toward the program. For a student juggling a master’s degree with life in Australia, this cuts down on required campus time and adds flexibility in planning coursework.

That same hybrid flexibility creates a practical question for students who are also parents. Children under 12 can’t be left without adult supervision, and Australian school summer holidays run a maximum of one month — shorter than the longer breaks common elsewhere. To ease the budget and childcare burden, children are often enrolled in a pre-school reception class as early as age 4.5, where they’re supervised by the school from at least 9:00 to 15:00. After age 12, the supervision requirement lifts and a child can stay home alone — which conveniently lines up with the extra free hours hybrid study gives a student-parent.

A 10-year reform of the education sector has already been announced, and over the next five years the demand for teachers is expected to stay stable.

Construction trades: rising demand for licensed specialists through 2035

Demand for electricians, air conditioning technicians, and plumbers — occupations that require a license — is projected to grow 9–10% by 2035. Other construction trades have a more modest forecast of 8–10% growth. For context, the housing market is estimated to be short by around 5 million homes, and that gap between demand and available labor is expected to persist for a long time.

The sector’s resilience comes down to the nature of the work itself. Automation and 3D-printed houses have already been tested in practice: a handful of buildings were actually printed, but demand for them never materialized. Hands-on, on-site work is hard to replace with technology, which is why the forecast for licensed trades stays positive even as AI spreads through the rest of the economy.

Licensed tradespeople also have another career path open to them — not employment, but running a contracting business of their own. Electricians, plumbers, and air conditioning technicians already work this way in practice: instead of one steady employer, they take contracts with different clients, which brings more freedom and higher earnings.

Tourism, manufacturing, and healthcare: three different trajectories

Alongside growth in healthcare, the arts and entertainment sector is projected to expand — and tourism along with it. Australia has long worked to attract tourists from Asia, China above all: inbound tourism is considered one of the simplest sources of income for an economy, since money flows in immediately through flights, hotels, and restaurants. A telling example of how much a successful cultural project can bring in is neighboring New Zealand, which earned a notable boost in tourist interest after the release of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

That said, the entertainment and tourism industry is highly exposed to downturns: in good years it brings in enormous money, but as soon as a slump hits, people cut spending on entertainment first and the industry runs dry — the same pattern plays out in show business.

Manufacturing tells a different story: despite efforts by the South Australian state government to reindustrialize, the manufacturing sector there is contracting. South Australia was historically an engineering hub — car manufacturing, shipbuilding, metalworking — but those plants are closing. Former industrial blocks are now home to gyms, cafes, and children’s activity centers: space once used for metalwork has shifted from manufacturing into services.

Healthcare stands apart from this broader picture: the forecast points to sustained demand because the work involves critical thinking and action in emergency situations — something AI won’t be able to replace in the foreseeable future. For occupations outside the growing list — beyond healthcare, construction, and aged care — projected growth is under 5%, and how AI will affect that trend going forward remains unknown.

Sector forecast across the Australian economy

Table scrolls sideways

Sector	Healthcare	Tourism / Entertainment	Manufacturing (South Australia)
Overall trend	growing, high demand	growing, but highly exposed to downturns	shrinking despite reindustrialization efforts
Driver	critical thinking and emergency decision-making AI can’t replace	tied to household spending and tourist inflows	closure of historic car-manufacturing and shipbuilding plants
Resilience in a downturn	high	low — entertainment spending is among the first things people cut in a downturn	low — former industrial space is shifting into services

Will AI replace migration agents and lawyers

Artificial intelligence is already partially replacing paperwork and basic information delivery — exactly the functions people used to pay a migration agent or lawyer for. That hits entry-level roles the hardest: interns and junior specialists who used to break into the industry through routine tasks now find there’s simply less for them to do, since AI absorbs that work.

Top-tier positions and the premium segment, though, aren’t going anywhere. In any industry — tourism, where some clients still want to skip booking a flight themselves and instead tell a person “just handle everything,” or migration services — there remains a category of clients willing to pay specifically for a human who takes responsibility for the outcome. The same logic applies to migration agents: some applicants will keep turning to specialists, while others will try to manage with AI on their own.

The catch is that trying to save money on a consultation often ends in a refusal: applicants who prepare documents using AI without an agent’s involvement regularly get refused, then come back for help after the fact. Getting a visa becomes considerably harder after a refusal. This bites especially hard with student visas: a refusal effectively makes enrollment at an institution impossible. The final call on sensitive matters — in medicine, for instance — still rests with a person, not a system.

applicants who prepare documents using AI without an agent’s involvement regularly get refused, then come back for help after the fact

The risks of preparing documents solo with ChatGPT

Migration practice has already seen applicants submit documents entirely on their own, relying on ChatGPT’s suggestions as the basis. In their correspondence with the Department of Home Affairs — an attempt to explain why they hadn’t completed military service — the phrasing gives away a style clearly prompted by an AI model rather than the applicant’s own words.

The result was a chain of further requests from the migration department. Applicants were asked — for the first time in the case history behind this material — to make a formal request to the Russian Embassy in Canberra asking it to confirm they have no outstanding military service obligations. The reason: when an officer sees a smooth explanation about declining service on grounds of conscience, the first thing checked isn’t the applicant’s sincerity but whether there’s a risk of a criminal case against them for evading military service in their country of citizenship. If such criminal proceedings have been opened or a sentence handed down, that can rule out getting a visa at all under the temporary-visa checks.

when an officer sees a smooth explanation about declining service on grounds of conscience, the first thing checked isn’t the applicant’s sincerity but whether there’s a risk of a criminal case against them for evading military service

One such request has gone unanswered for 3.5 years now — even though the visa itself was issued long ago, and the status is simply being tracked out of curiosity to see when a reply arrives. There’s also a suggestion to make such embassy requests a standard, default part of the document package — so these inquiries become routine for officers rather than a trigger for extra suspicion.

The takeaway from both examples is straightforward: handing document preparation entirely over to a system that produces smooth, generically agreeable phrasing isn’t a good idea — that kind of phrasing is exactly what puts an applicant at risk of losing years to extra scrutiny.

When to start your immigration strategy: why waiting for a language test is a mistake

An immigration strategy needs to be built right now, not after the language is polished and the test is passed. A common mistake is pushing document preparation back a year or two for the sake of English: in that time, the landscape shifts, and reaching the point of “I’ve learned the language, I’m ready” often means having to roll back two or three years and change occupation, employer, or pathway. Reworking the plan from there takes roughly another two years — and part of that time eats into the applicant’s age, since requirements for a number of visas are tied to age thresholds, and delay can push a candidate past them.

The move starts not with the language but with building an individual, occupation-specific immigration strategy. An AI model can point to a general direction, but it can’t work through an applicant’s specific situation the way a person can. In the past, an intermediate approach was common: get a tourist visa to be physically present in Australia, with the option to switch to a different status from inside the country or leave if needed. Conditions have since tightened, and some options that used to be available may no longer exist — those who acted half a year earlier managed to use opportunities that later disappeared.

Frequently asked questions

What should an IT specialist do if they’ve already applied under subclass 189 and been refused due to the sharp drop in invitations

It’s worth looking at alternative pathways and sectors of the economy — construction, for example, where demand for licensed specialists is forecast to keep growing steadily. The right choice depends on the applicant’s qualifications and circumstances, so there’s no single route that simply replaces 189.

Can a teaching qualification be established if the education master’s degree was earned outside Australia

The rules require Australian education at bachelor’s level or higher in teaching, or an accredited Australian master’s in education — a foreign education degree on its own doesn’t meet that requirement. Applicants need to check the list of accredited institutions in Australia specifically.

What happens if a teacher’s EOI score is only the formal minimum of 65 points instead of 80

An application can technically go in with 65 points, but in practice that doesn’t provide real competitiveness: invitations go to candidates with higher scores, roughly 80 and up. With a lower score, an applicant may sit in the queue for a long time without receiving an invitation.

Can a licensed construction specialist work in Australia as a contractor instead of an employee

Yes — electricians, plumbers, and air conditioning technicians already commonly work this way, taking contracts with different clients instead of one steady employer, which brings more freedom and higher earnings than standard employment.

What’s the risk of a visa refusal if documents were prepared using ChatGPT without an agent

A refusal makes getting a visa considerably harder going forward, and for a student visa it effectively makes enrollment at an institution impossible. On top of that, the smooth, generic phrasing an AI model produces can trigger extra checks and requests from the migration department that drag on for years.

Why does an officer check for a risk of criminal prosecution for evading military service rather than the sincerity of an applicant’s explanation

What the officer cares about isn’t the applicant’s motivation for declining service as such, but whether a criminal case for evasion has been opened against them back home. If such proceedings have started or a sentence has been handed down, it can rule out getting a visa under the relevant temporary-visa checks.

How long can it take to get a reply from an embassy to a request about military service obligations

The timeline is unpredictable: one such request has gone unanswered for 3.5 years, even though the visa in question was issued long ago, with the status simply being tracked out of curiosity to see when a reply eventually comes.

Should language test preparation be dropped entirely if an immigration strategy needs to start right away

It’s not about dropping test preparation — it’s about sequencing. The strategy and occupational pathway need to be built in parallel with language learning, not postponed until after the test is passed. Otherwise the job market can shift in the meantime, and a finished language result may no longer match the plan it was meant to support.