SEEK Employment Report - March
*Applications per job ad are recorded with a one-month lag. Data shown in this report refers to February data.
AI Insights:
References to AI-related skills within job ads have risen 75.1% y/y.
Aside from Information & Communication Technology AI references are most common in ads for roles in Marketing & Communications.
National Insights:
Job ads have declined at the same pace since September, down 0.4% m/m in March.
Applications per job ad also declined slightly, down 0.5% m/m, but candidate activity remains elevated, particularly for jobs in Education & Training (+27.4% y/y).
State and Territory Insights:
Hiring activity slowed m/m across the eastern seaboard, but grew in Western Australia (0.4%) and the Northern Territory (0.2%).
Western Australia is the only state or Territory where ad volumes have grown y/y (1.6%).
Industry Insights:
Job ad volume rose in five industries m/m, led by Mining, Resources & Energy (1.7%), Engineering (1.4%) and Consulting & Strategy (0.6%).
Annual growth in hiring was restricted to resources, trades and infrastructure-related industries, with Engineering leading at 7.9% y/y.
SEEK Chief Economist, Dr Blair Chapman says:
“Job ads referencing AI continue to grow, though at less than 2 per cent, only represent a small portion of total job ads. The largest proportion are those within Information & Communication Technology and Marketing & Communications.
“While overall hiring continues to cool, employers are still actively recruiting for roles related to infrastructure and energy investment projects, as they pull back more sharply in Professional Services and Public Sector roles.
“Given the events that have played out globally over the past month this slight moderation is unsurprising.We can expect this increased uncertainty to have employers feeling a little more cautious in the near term until a clearer view of the situation emerges.
“This is leading to a more pronounced geographical divide in job ad growth. While demand for workers in Construction, Engineering and Mining & Resources is present in almost all regions, there are proportionately more of these roles in Western Australia, and the Northern Territory, and fewer of the sectors driving the decline, such as Banking & Financial Services and Government & Defence.”
AI Insights
SEEK’s new AI data shows demand for AI skills continuing to rise, with AI references in job ads up 75.2% y/y, though the rate of growth has slowed slightly in the past month (Figure 1).
AI references are most common in job ads for roles in Information & Communication Technology, where 11.4% of job ads mention AI, followed by Marketing & Communications (5.5%), Science and Technology (4.7%) and Consulting & Strategy (4.4%).
Job ads for occupations with relatively low AI automation exposurecontinue to grow, up 1.3% y/y, compared to medium and high exposure job ads which have declined slightly (Figure 2).
Figure 1: The SEEK AI Gauge – Measure of job ads that include AI-related keywords, shown as an index
Figure 2: Annual job ad growth by average task automation score - low, medium and high AI automation. Source: JSA, SEEK. See notes at end for more information.
National Insights
Job ads have declined 0.4% for a seventh consecutive month, continuing the slow cooling of hiring activity after an extended period of elevated demand. Despite the slow but steady decline, job ad volumes remain in line with pre-COVID volumes, and are just 2.9% lower y/y.
Applications per job ad have also begun to decline slowly, from an extremely elevated peak, down 0.5% m/m and 2.3% y/y.
Figure 3: National SEEK job ad percentage change m/m
State and Territory Insights
The geographic pattern of hiring is becoming more uneven as all of the eastern states recorded monthly, quarterly and annual job ad decline.
The divide reflects the composition of industries in each state, with proportionately more white-collar and consumer services roles located in Victoria, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory – roles which are declining in contrast to those within the trades and industrial sectors. Of the few industries recording annual growth in Victoria and New South Wales, Construction (VIC: 9.6%, NSW: 5.1%) and Engineering (NSW: 2.3%, VIC: 6.1%) are among the strongest.
Conversely, ad volumes in Western Australia are rising, up 0.4% m/m, and 1.6% y/y, making it the only state to record positive annual growth in job ads. The Northern Territory recorded m/m growth in ad volumes, driven by rising demand for Mining, Resources & Energy (2.8%) and Healthcare & Medical (1.1%) workers, though job ads are 8.4% lower y/y. The relative outperformance in these two regions reflects particular demand within energy and industrial roles.
South Australia presents a more neutral picture. Job ads were flat m/m and only slightly lower than a year ago (-0.1%), suggesting conditions there have stabilised after steady growth the year prior.
Figure 4: State and territory job ad growth/decline comparing i) March 2026 to February 2026 (m/m) and ii) March 2026 to March 2025 (y/y).
Industry Insights
Job ads fell m/m in most industries in March, notably in Call Centre & Customer Service (-3.0%), Real Estate & Property (-2.3%) and Marketing & Communications (-1.7%). Five industries bucked the trend by recording rising job ad volumes m/m, including Mining, Resources & Energy (1.7%), Engineering (1.4%) and Consulting & Strategy (0.6%).
Over the year to March, growth has been driven solely by demand for workers to support large infrastructure and energy projects, with strong annual rises in Engineering (7.9%), Mining, Resources & Energy (7.3%), Construction (6.8%) and Manufacturing, Transport & Logistics (5.5%).
By contrast, many Professional and Public Services industries recorded double‑digit annual falls in job ads, including Government & Defence (-14.9%), Advertising, Arts & Media (-14.4%), Banking & Financial Services (-14.0%) and Call Centre & Customer Service (-13.5%).
Figure 5: Job ad change by sector
*According to SEEK classifications, Construction is both an industry classification and a sector group comprised of multiple industries.
Figure 6: National SEEK job ad percentage change by industry (March 2026 vs February 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 2 maps annual job ad growth at the role level, according to roles with 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 Burhan Naeem.
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.