Australia’s most in-demand jobs and the occupations you should try to avoid

The nation’s job market is changing. If you want to ensure you’ve got a job for life, these are the roles you should avoid.

As we race through the 21st century, Aussies are left wondering if the job they’re working in 2019 will exist in 10, 15 — even five years.

How long until a robot takes over my job? How long will my university degree last? Should I even bother going to university? They’re questions running through every Australian’s mind.

But thankfully, the Australian Bureau of Statistics has long been tracking employment in the country helping Aussies understand the best places to apply for jobs and the occupations you should probably avoid.

Over the past 30 years, Australia’s labour market has changed drastically.

The rise of technology and the mechanisation of our factories has affected some more labour-heavy jobs in Australia while the explosion of the internet has dramatically affected other occupations such as journalism.

There are jobs you should go for and others to avoid.

The Australian collated the ABS statistics, finding around a third of the nation’s workforce could be put down to just 20 jobs.

Around four million Aussies are employed in these 20 different jobs, all of which have been “in demand” for the past three decades.

But the nation’s job market is changing.

Australia’s most common job — sales assistant — has grown massively in the past 30 years but compared to the figures from 2016, working as a sales assistant in 2019 is on shaky ground.

Our changing retail environment has been blamed for that as statistics show there are 126,000 fewer sales assistants in 2019 than there was in 2016.

And it isn’t just sales assistants that are in trouble. Their managers, or retail supervisors, are also in decline as 14,000 less jobs are on offer now than there was in 2016.

That decline goes right up the food chain with chief executives and managing directors seeing a 52 per cent decline in those three years with 31,000 less jobs. General managers also ranked sixth worst in the nation’s job decline.

Call centre and customer service managers are also struggling to find employment, with 11,000 less in the workforce than 2016.

While hands-on jobs are often touted as the best way to survive, there are plenty of cliche “safe” jobs in decline also.

Nursing support and personal care workers experienced a 10 per cent decline with 10,000 less of them in the workforce in 2019.

Gardeners, handypersons, farmers, electricians, plasterers and housekeepers were all in Australia’s top 20 jobs in decline from 2016 to 2019.

But it isn’t all bad news for Australia’s job market. There are plenty of careers on the rise.

The nation’s fastest growing job is anyone working as a checkout operator or office cashier.

It seems to be a direct contradiction to the sharp decline of sales assistants but is a reflection on retail and grocery stores taking their workers off the floor and instead leaving customers to their own devices until they take whatever they want to buy to the checkout.

More than 90,000 extra people have taken up the nation’s fastest growing job between 2016 and 2019.

Australia’s changing retail market is also helping out those working in advertising, public relations and managing sales.

That job market saw a 32 per cent rise with 41,000 more jobs in the past three years.

Unsurprisingly, a tech job made the top three occupations on the rise with 33,000 more software and application programmers scoring jobs in the past three years.

Accountants and education aides rounded out the country’s top five jobs on the rise.

Registered nurses, primary school teachers and car drivers were also high in demand, all reported a big rise over the past three years.

Earlier today, news.com.au reported on how university could be a waste of time with a recent Grattan Institute report showing doing a degree could leave some people $30,000 worse off.

RELATED: What you should do instead of university

Tom Larter, the CEO of technology firm WithYouWithMe (WYWM), said while education and learning from university could be valuable, it was more important to get into the workforce as quickly as possible.

“Jobs are changing so fast, you need to get into your first job and then use lifelong learning to build out your skills,” Mr Larter told news.com.au.

“We’ve got to speed up the rate that we learn new skills.

“Find out what you’re good at, make yourself competitive quickly by learning in-demand skills, get into the workforce as fast as you can and then continually learn through your career as you go.”

Mr Larter, who works to upskill Aussies for the ever-changing workforce, said it was important for people to be aware of careers that mightn’t of existed 10 years ago.

“We’ve had bus drivers and junior sailors with no experience in cybersecurity do a 12-week training course and get jobs,” Mr Larter said.