Ten-year career predictions are usually wrong in the specifics but right in the patterns. Anyone claiming to know exactly which jobs will exist in 2036 is selling something. This guide focuses on the patterns instead. It maps four categories of careers across the next decade: those that will grow strongly, those that AI will likely create, those that AI cannot meaningfully replace, and those that are likely to shrink. The reader of this guide is a 10-year career planner.
A student choosing what to study. A mid-career professional weighing a strategic move. A parent helping a young person decide. A worker in an industry that already feels like it is changing.
The Forces Shaping the Next Decade of Work in Australia
The pillar guide already covers the five forces reshaping future careers. This section is different. It is about how those forces compound over a decade, because a 10-year horizon changes which trends matter most.
AI and automation are moving from novelty to infrastructure. The version of AI that exists in 2026 is barely a draft of what will be embedded across Australian workplaces by 2036. Compounding matters here: incremental capability gains stack into structural change.
Australia’s ageing population peaks during this decade. Australian Bureau of Statistics projections show the share of Australians over 65 growing substantially through to 2036, which permanently changes the demand profile for healthcare, aged care, and social services.
The net zero transition reaches its deployment phase between 2030 and 2035. The renewable energy build-out, grid modernisation, and electrification of transport are not abstract policy. They are construction, engineering, and trades work happening in every state.
The AUKUS partnership drives a defence industry expansion through the mid-2030s, particularly in submarines, advanced manufacturing, and engineering, with South Australia and Western Australia leading the workforce build-up.
CSIRO’s Our Future World report identifies these compounding shifts as the central story of Australia’s decade ahead, and Jobs and Skills Australia’s workforce projections sit on top of the same trend lines. For the forces shaping future careers at a category level, the pillar guide goes deeper.
Careers That Will Grow Strongly in the Next 10 Years
Eight career categories will see structural growth in Australia between 2026 and 2036. The drivers are different in each case, but the underlying pattern is the same: demand will exceed supply for the entire decade.
Healthcare and Allied Health Professionals
Registered nurses, mental health professionals, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, speech pathologists, and paramedics will all see sustained growth through to 2036. The Productivity Commission identifies healthcare and social assistance as the largest workforce growth area in Australia by absolute numbers over the coming decade, and AHPRA registration data already shows demand outpacing supply across most clinical fields. The drivers compound: an ageing population, rising chronic disease prevalence, and the long-overdue expansion of the mental health workforce.
Aged Care, Disability Support, and Community Workers
This is the largest workforce growth area in Australia by absolute numbers. ABS workforce data projects substantial expansion through to 2036, driven by the same demographic curve plus the National Disability Insurance Scheme. The NDIS sustainability question is real, and government reforms will shape the sector. Demand remains structural, though, because the underlying need does not go away when the funding model changes.
Renewable Energy and Climate Transition Roles
Renewable energy technicians, grid engineers, battery storage specialists, energy efficiency assessors, and environmental engineers are entering a decade-long deployment phase. Jobs and Skills Australia identifies green jobs as one of the strongest national growth categories, with shortage signals already appearing ahead of the major build-out. Australia’s commitment to net zero is not driving a one-off hiring spike. It is driving a 10 to 15 year construction and engineering programme.
Cybersecurity and Information Security Professionals
Cybersecurity demand keeps growing even when other tech roles contract. The Australian Signals Directorate has flagged the national cyber workforce gap as a critical priority, and the Jobs and Skills Australia Skills Priority List confirms structural undersupply. The driver is simple: every business, government department, and critical infrastructure asset in Australia is now a cyber target, and the workforce to defend them has not kept pace.
Data, AI, and Machine Learning Specialists
Data engineers, AI specialists, and machine learning practitioners shift from a tech specialty into a cross-industry baseline. The Tech Council of Australia and CSIRO Data61 both project sustained growth in this category through to 2036. The reason this category grows even as AI displaces other roles: AI does not deploy itself. Every Australian organisation embedding AI needs people who can build, tune, govern, and maintain the systems.
Defence, Aerospace, and AUKUS-Linked Engineering
The Australian defence industry expansion runs through the mid-2030s, anchored by AUKUS submarine construction, advanced manufacturing, and the long-tail engineering work around them. The Australian Industry Group identifies defence engineering and skilled trades as one of the most reliable long-horizon growth categories. South Australia leads the submarine workforce build-up, with Western Australia and New South Wales close behind on adjacent infrastructure and systems work.
Construction, Trades, and Infrastructure Roles
Electricians, plumbers, carpenters, HVAC technicians, and construction project managers are in chronic short supply now, and the infrastructure pipeline ensures the demand continues for a decade. The Australian Industry Group’s workforce data points to sustained shortages, and the renewable energy transition adds to traditional housing and infrastructure demand. Trades are not just safe through 2036. They are one of the strongest bets in the entire Australian economy.
Early Childhood, Primary, and STEM Secondary Teachers
The structural teacher shortage is confirmed across multiple Jobs and Skills Australia reports, with early childhood educators (ECTs) and secondary STEM teachers facing the largest gaps. The Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership manages the registration framework, and Universities Australia data shows teaching enrolments declining while demand keeps climbing. This category will not solve itself within the decade, which makes it one of the most reliable long-term growth areas.
New Careers Likely to Emerge from AI
AI does not just replace work. It creates work. The next decade will produce a set of new career categories that barely exist in 2026 but will employ thousands of Australians by 2036.
AI Implementation Specialist and AI Integration Engineer
This role translates off-the-shelf AI models into working business systems. It sits between the data science team that builds models and the operations team that uses them. AI implementation specialists configure tools, integrate them with existing software, train teams, and handle the practical messiness of deploying AI in real Australian workplaces. The role typically recruits from software engineering, IT consulting, and product management backgrounds.
AI Ethics and Governance Professional
The compliance, ethics, and risk roles around AI deployment are becoming a regulated profession in formation. The OECD’s AI principles and Australia’s growing AI governance framework, including the work emerging from the AI Safety Institute, are creating demand for specialists who understand both the technology and the legal, ethical, and reputational risks. The pattern resembles cybersecurity in the early 2000s: a niche concern in 2005, a board-level priority by 2015. The AI governance is following the same curve, ten years faster.
AI Trainer and Model Quality Specialist
AI models do not become useful by themselves. They become useful through human-in-the-loop training, reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), and domain-specific tuning. AI trainers and model quality specialists do the human work that makes AI accurate, safe, and useful in specific Australian contexts. The role recruits from subject matter expertise (legal, medical, financial) rather than computer science backgrounds.
Prompt and AI Workflow Designer
The “prompt engineer” role of the early 2020s is maturing into something closer to an AI-enabled process designer. The job is not about clever wording. It is about designing the full workflow around AI tools so they consistently produce the right outputs in production environments. Knowledge work consultants, business analysts, and operations specialists are the natural recruitment pools.
AI-Human Collaboration Coach and AI Productivity Consultant
This role helps teams actually use AI tools effectively. The gap is enormous. Most Australian organisations have rolled out AI tools faster than their workforces have learned to use them well. AI collaboration coaches train teams, redesign workflows, and measure productivity gains. Learning and development professionals, change management consultants, and former teachers are entering this category in 2026.
AI Auditor and Algorithmic Accountability Specialist
Independent verification of AI systems for fairness, safety, and compliance is becoming a distinct profession. The OECD and emerging Australian regulators are pushing toward auditable AI, particularly in high-stakes domains like finance, healthcare, and hiring. AI auditors sit alongside financial auditors and cybersecurity auditors as a credentialed specialist function.
Synthetic Media and Deepfake Forensics Specialist
The other side of generative AI is detecting it. Newsrooms, courts, security agencies, and corporate communications teams all need specialists who can verify whether content is real, manipulated, or fully synthetic. The role is small in 2026 and will grow rapidly through to 2036 as misinformation pressures intensify.
Careers That AI Will Not Replace in the Next 10 Years
AI affects nearly every job, but a specific set of careers is highly resistant to displacement. This section is not about avoiding AI. It is about identifying careers where AI augments rather than replaces.
Hands-On Physical Trades
Electricians, plumbers, carpenters, mechanics, and HVAC technicians remain AI-resistant for a clear reason. Robotics in unstructured physical environments is a hard, slow problem that the next decade will not solve. Trades work happens in unique buildings, on damaged systems, in tight spaces, with judgment calls about safety and quality that no current robot can match. TAFE-trained tradespeople will not be replaced by AI in this decade.
Direct-Care Healthcare Roles
Nurses, allied health professionals, paramedics, and aged care workers do physical care, exercise clinical judgment, and provide human presence. None of these can be meaningfully automated. AHPRA’s regulatory framework reinforces the human-only nature of these roles, and Australian healthcare consistently demonstrates that the workforce gap is about people, not tools.
Mental Health Professionals and Counsellors
Therapy, counselling, and complex mental health support depend on the therapeutic relationship, legal and ethical responsibility, and human judgment in fragile situations. AI tools may support documentation and screening, but the work itself remains human.
Complex Negotiation, Diplomacy, and Strategic Advisory Roles
Senior leaders, diplomats, complex commercial negotiators, and strategic consultants make high-stakes, multi-party, ethically loaded decisions. These are exactly the situations where AI’s lack of accountability, context, and judgment makes it unfit for the work.
Creative Direction and Original Creative Roles
The distinction matters here. AI is already replacing routine creative production (basic stock imagery, generic marketing copy, templated video). It is not replacing creative direction. The roles that survive are the ones that set the brief, define the vision, and decide what to create, not the ones that fill the brief with output. Creative directors, editorial leads, and original artists remain in demand. Production-only roles are at risk.
Childhood Educators and Specialised Teachers
Early childhood educators and special education teachers combine physical presence, behavioural management, and developmental judgment in ways AI cannot replicate. The work happens in classrooms with young children, and the human relationship is the work.
Emergency Services and First Responders
Paramedics, firefighters, and police officers in operational roles work in real-time, high-stakes physical environments. AI may assist with logistics, dispatch, and analysis, but the responders themselves remain irreplaceably human.
Skilled Construction and Infrastructure Roles
Site supervisors, complex project managers, and specialised construction roles combine physical presence, multi-trade coordination, and ongoing decision-making. The work is not just hard for AI to do. It is structurally human work happening on real construction sites.
A Note on IT Jobs Specifically
IT is not a monolith, and readers searching for “will IT jobs survive” deserve a clear answer. AI is already compressing some IT roles: entry-level coding, basic technical support, routine quality assurance, and simple software testing. AI is simultaneously expanding other IT roles: cybersecurity, AI engineering, cloud architecture, complex systems integration, and platform engineering.
The decade-long IT outlook is a smaller number of higher-skill IT roles plus a larger number of AI-adjacent specialist roles. An IT career in 2036 will look different from an IT career in 2026. The work shifts up the value chain, toward problems AI cannot solve independently. But an IT career absolutely still exists in 2036, and the workers who reposition into the AI-adjacent specialisations will do well.
Careers That Are Likely to Shrink or Disappear in the Next 10 Years
This section is honest, not alarmist. Workers currently in these roles have time to reposition, and the next section is exactly about that.
Routine Administrative and Data Entry Roles
These are the highest-fit targets for current AI capability. Generic data entry, basic email handling, simple scheduling, and routine document processing are all shrinking rapidly. The roles do not vanish overnight. The entry routes close, the wages flatten, and the workforce contracts over years.
Basic Bookkeeping and Routine Accounting Tasks
CPA Australia data tracks the trend. Bookkeeping is shrinking as AI tools automate transaction matching, basic reconciliation, and routine reporting. Complex tax advisory, strategic finance, audit, and forensic accounting continue to grow. The accountant who moves up the value chain stays in demand. The bookkeeper who only does routine work faces a flatter career path.
Entry-Level Legal Research and Paralegal Work
The same pattern. Routine case law research, document review, and contract checking are all being absorbed by legal technology. Complex legal practice, litigation strategy, and specialised legal advisory continue to grow. The early-career legal worker who develops advisory and judgment skills stays in demand.
Routine Translation and Transcription
Machine translation has crossed the threshold where most casual and business translation is now done by software. Specialised legal, medical, and high-stakes translation remains, with human translators serving as quality reviewers and certifiers. The volume of routine translation work collapses.
Telemarketing, Routine Customer Service, and Call Centre Work
The first wave is already underway. AI customer service handles a growing share of routine queries, and the call centre workforce has contracted in Australia and globally. Complex customer service involving judgment, empathy, or escalation handling continues, but the volume role has structurally shrunk.
Routine Content Production
Generic article writing, basic product descriptions, and routine marketing copy are increasingly produced by AI. The content roles that survive move up to strategy, editorial judgment, brand voice, original reporting, and creative direction. Production-only content work is one of the fastest-shrinking categories in 2026.
Traditional Print Media Roles
This is the continuation of a 20-year trend, not an AI-caused shift. Print circulation continues to fall, and roles tied specifically to print media (production, layout, traditional reporting structures) continue to contract. Journalism itself is not dying. The print delivery model is.
Standalone Travel Agents and Routine Booking Roles
Specialised, high-touch travel advisory roles continue. Cruise specialists, luxury travel consultants, and complex multi-destination trip planners remain in demand. Routine booking work has been declining for two decades and continues to do so.
The important framing: “shrink” almost never means “disappear overnight”. It means the entry routes close, the wages flatten, and the workforce contracts over years. Workers currently in these roles have time to reposition. The next section is exactly about that.
How to Position Yourself for the Next Decade of Work?
A 10-year career strategy is fundamentally different from a job search. Positioning matters more than planning, because the destination keeps moving.
The Skill Stack, Not the Job Title
The most durable thing about a career over 10 years is the skill stack, not the role. “I am a marketer” is the wrong identity for 2026 to 2036. “I have a stack of skills including audience research, behavioural insight, written communication, data analysis, and stakeholder management” is the right one. The skills travel. The job title might not.
The skill stack approach treats your career as a portfolio of capabilities that lets you adapt as roles evolve. The same five or six core skills can power three or four different jobs across a decade, often in industries you have not yet considered.
The Reskilling Decade
Most Australian workers will reskill at least once between 2026 and 2036. This is not a worst-case scenario. It is the central pattern. Universities Australia and TAFE both report rising adult learning participation, driven by mid-career professionals rather than school leavers.
The realistic time and cost commitment depends on the reskill. A short course or micro-credential takes 3 to 6 months and signals capability in an adjacent field. A diploma or postgraduate certificate takes 1 to 2 years and supports a meaningful career switch. A full degree change takes 3 to 4 years and is usually only justified for regulated professions.
While reskilling, many Australian workers use platforms like CloudColleague to take freelance or project work in their new direction. This builds practical experience and income before fully switching roles, which reduces the risk of the transition. A bookkeeper studying data analysis can take small data projects on the side. A retail manager studying digital marketing can run real campaigns for small businesses. Real work in the new field is worth more than another certificate.
For a structured approach to the move, the career change process guide covers the practical method.
The Portfolio Career as a Decade-Long Strategy
Holding one job for 10 years is now the exception, not the rule. ABS workforce data shows the average Australian now changes employers multiple times per decade, and the share of workers doing some form of contract, freelance, or project work alongside or instead of full-time employment continues to grow.
The portfolio career model combines a primary role with freelance, project, or side work. It is no longer fringe. For workers thinking on a 10-year horizon, the portfolio model is structurally lower risk than a single-employer strategy, because it builds multiple skill applications, multiple income streams, and multiple potential career directions at once.
CloudColleague is built for this exact pattern. Full-time jobs, freelance tasks, contracts, and project work in one platform means the same account that holds your full-time role today can hold your freelance income tomorrow and your next career direction the year after. That is what a 10-year career in architecture actually looks like in practice.
The Annual Career Audit
A 30-minute end-of-year practice outperforms most formal career planning. Once a year, ask four questions:
- Which of my skills appreciated this year, and which depreciated?
- What direction is my industry moving over the next 3 to 5 years?
- Did I build any new skill this year that did not exist on my resume 12 months ago?
- What single move would best position me for the next 3 years?
The cumulative effect of doing this every December for a decade is substantial. Most workers never do it.
Build a Working Life That Survives the Next 10 Years
The next decade of work will reward people who think in skill stacks, plan for at least one reskill, and combine work models rather than relying on a single job. Stop trying to pick the perfect career. Start building the kind of working life that can navigate whatever 2036 actually looks like.
A 10-year career almost certainly involves multiple roles, at least one reskill, and a mix of full-time, freelance, and project work. CloudColleague is built for that whole journey. A single platform for jobs, tasks, and freelance work as your career evolves through the next decade.
Frequently Asked Questions About Career Growth Over the Next 10 Years
Healthcare, aged care, renewable energy, cybersecurity, trades, and teaching will grow most strongly through to 2036, per Jobs and Skills Australia.
Trades, direct-care healthcare, mental health professionals, childhood educators, and emergency services workers resist AI displacement. Judgment and human presence define each role.
Yes, but reshaped. AI is compressing entry-level coding and basic support. It is also expanding cybersecurity, AI engineering, and cloud architecture. Fewer routine roles, more specialist ones.
AI trainers, prompt designers, ethics professionals, auditors, and synthetic media forensics specialists are all emerging. Each category is small in 2026 but grows substantially by 2036.
Routine admin, basic bookkeeping, transcription, telemarketing, and travel booking are all shrinking. Workers in these roles still have time to reposition through reskilling.
Yes. Jobs and Skills Australia flags skilled trades as severely undersupplied nationally. The infrastructure pipeline runs the full decade. Renewable energy adds further demand. Trades are a strong long-horizon bet.
Build a skill stack rather than defending a job title. Plan for at least one reskill before 2036. Combine full-time work with freelance or project work where possible.
