SEEK Employment Report - February
NOTE: Due to the trend adjustments made in this report, the monthly job ad trends for the past few months have been revised downward.
*Applications per job ad are recorded with a one-month lag. Data shown in this report refers to January data.
AI Insights:
New insights looking at the impact of AI on job ad volumes suggest automation is not yet having an impact on newly created jobs.
References to AI-related skills within job ads have almost tripled since 2019.
National Insights:
Job ads fell by 0.5% m/m for the third consecutive month and annual decline has accelerated to 2.6%.
Applications per job ad continue to decline slowly from their peak in June.
State and Territory Insights:
Western Australia is the only state or territory to record monthly (0.2%) and annual (1.4%) job ad growth.
Ad volumes declined in New South Wales (-1.1%) Victoria (-1.0%) and Queensland (-0.8%).
Industry Insights:
Five industries recorded annual growth, notably Construction (11.5% y/y) and Manufacturing, Transport & Logistics (6.1% y/y).
Advertising, Arts & Media roles declined the fastest m/m (-3.9%) followed by Consulting & Strategy (-3.3%) and Information & Communication Technology (-2.8%).
AI Insights
Automation exposure, as measured by Jobs and Skills Australia, is the degree to which Generative AI can undertake the tasks that make up a specific occupation. SEEK has used these exposure measures to analyse job ads for roles with low, medium and high exposure to AI-related automation. Job ads for occupations with relatively low AI automation exposure have been growing at a slow but steady annual pace. Occupations at the high and medium levels of AI exposure have been declining, but the rate of decline has slowed significantly over the past six months and is now near stagnant (Figure 1).
Separately, in investigating the change in demand for AI skills in job ads, SEEK’s analysis has found that references to AI-related skills have soared 83% since early 2024 and is now almost three times its 2019 level (Figure 2).
References are most common in job ads for IT roles but the share of Marketing & Communications roles featuring AI terms has also grown sharply in recent years.
Figure 1: Annual job ad growth by average task automation score - low, medium and high AI automation. See notes at end for more information.
Figure 2: The SEEK AI Gauge – Measure of job ads that include AI-related keywords
SEEK Chief Economist, Dr Blair Chapman says:
“Ad volumes have been trending down slowly since mid-last year, trend adjusted. The downward trend is driven by broad caution in the labour market, and this may persist for some time as global uncertainty rises.
“While it may be tempting to attribute this decline to the rise of AI, our findings suggest automation is not yet having a negative impact on job ad volumes. The trend decline in key industries such as Consulting & Strategy and Information & Communication Technology predates the dispersion of LLMs in the workplace, suggesting that it is not the result of automation.
“Separately, there is widespread growth in industries including Construction, Insurance & Superannuation and Engineering, pointing to pockets of demand for physical and cognitive roles.”
National Insights
Job ads fell 0.5% in January, and on a trend adjusted basis, this marks the seventh month of small but consistent decline. Both quarterly and annually the rate of decline has increased in the past two months and job ads are down 2.6% compared to February 2025.
Applications per job ad dropped 0.6% in January, continuing incremental slowdown in candidate activity that began in mid-2025.
Figure 3: National SEEK job ad percentage change m/m
State and Territory Insights
Most of the country recorded a monthly drop in job ad volumes in February, with New South Wales (-1.1%), Queensland (-0.8%) and Victoria (-1.0%) the largest contributors. The Northern Territory (0.5%) and Western Australia (0.2%) were the only states to buck the trend.
In the Northern Territory, solid growth in Community Services & Development (1.4%), Government & Defence (3.5%) and Hospitality & Tourism (2.4%) drove the monthly rise in ad volumes.
In Western Australia, which was the only region to record a monthly and annual increase in job ads, the short- and long-term growth was due to small but important upticks in the key hiring industries of Mining, Resources & Energy (1.1% m/m), Retail & Consumer Products (2.8%) and Construction (2.0%).
Applications per job ad rose m/m in New South Wales (0.2%), the Northern Territory (0.2%) and Victoria (0.1%).
Figure 4: State and territory job ad growth/decline comparing i) February 2026 to January 2026 (m/m) and ii) February 2026 to February 2025 (y/y).
Industry Insights
While ad volumes across all sectors declined m/m in February, they fell fastest in Professional Services industries, including Consulting & Strategy (-3.3%) and Information & Communication Technology (-2.8%).
Only a handful of industries recorded monthly ad volumes growth, led by Retail & Consumer Products (0.9%), Construction (0.4%) and Insurance & Superannuation (0.4%).
Annually, job ads have grown within the Construction and Industrial sectors. The Construction industry* has recorded the most consistent growth over the past year, rising steadily since early 2025, and up 11.5% y/y. It is one of only five industries with annual job ad growth, followed by Manufacturing, Transport & Logistics (6.1%), Sports & Recreation (2.6%), Mining, Resources & Energy (2.5%) and Trades & Services (1.6%).
Following the monthly trend, the largest annual declines were predominantly recorded in the Professional Services sector; Consulting & Strategy (-15.5%), Banking & Financial Services (-14.3%) and Information & Communication Technology (-13.6%).
Table 1: Annual and monthly job ad change by sector
*According to SEEK classifications, Construction is both an industry classification and a sector group comprised of multiple industries.
Figure 5: National SEEK job ad percentage change by industry (February 2026 vs January 2026) – Ordered by job ad volume
NOTE: Jobs and Skills Australia have measured the degree to which tasks within a given role can be automated by Generative AI and assigned an average score to each role – the average task automation score. Figure 1 maps annual job ad growth at the role level, according to roleswith low, medium and high scores. Roles and their scores can be viewed on the Jobs and Skills Australia site.
The data contained in this report can be downloaded here.
Banner image by luis gomes.
About the SEEK Employment Report
The SEEK Employment Report is Australia’s leading employment index and provides a comprehensive overview of the Australian Employment Marketplace. The report includes the SEEK Employment Index (SEI) which measures only new job ads posted within the reported month to provide a clean measure of demand for labour across all classifications.
To improve this index and continuously ensure its market accuracy, SEEK has implemented two main changes to the data within these reports since late 2025; i) Reporting on trend estimates rather than seasonally adjusted estimates from August 2025 onwards and ii) The inclusion of company listings in the SEI from November 2025.
The SEI may differ to the job ad count on SEEK’s website due to a number of factors including a) the trend adjustments applied to the SEI; and b) the exclusion of duplicated job ads from the SEI.
Caution is recommended when interpreting trend estimates during the COVID period as large month-to-month changes in variables generated multiple trend breaks.
The applications per ad index contains a series break at Jan 2016 when the calculation of this series changed from using gross variables (inclusive of all SEEK job ads) to net variables (removing duplicate job ads). This change has a negligible impact on recent data points, but caution is recommended when interpreting data immediately following the series break, and particularly in 2016 where growth rates have not been adjusted for the series break.
Disclaimer: The Data should be viewed and regarded as standalone information and should not be aggregated with any other information whether such information has been previously provided by SEEK Limited, ("SEEK").
The Data is given in summary form and whilst care has been taken in its preparation, SEEK makes no representations whatsoever about its completeness or accuracy. SEEK expressly bears no responsibility or liability for any reliance placed by you on the Data, or from the use of the Data by you.