Tech sector on hunt for 60,000 workers outside industry to meet 1m jobs by 2025 target

Top tech companies need 60,000-plus workers to retrain post-pandemic, warning high school graduates, migrants alone won’t solve skills gap.

Technology Council of Australia chief executive Kate Pounder with her daughter Izzy. Picture: The Australian

The nation’s top tech companies are looking for more than 60,000 workers to retrain as the Covid-19 pandemic recedes, saying graduates and migrants alone won’t solve the skills gap and fulfil the nation’s potential to rival Silicon Valley and Tel Aviv.

Under a plan released on Monday, the Technology Council is urging state and commonwealth governments to create one million jobs in the sector by 2025, which it says would add $250bn to the economy.

The Technology Council, representing major firms including Google, Atlassian, Airtasker, After­pay and Microsoft, says the sector’s recent growth had created a significant skills shortage.

To fill this gap, the sector will need at least 60,000 workers by 2025 who have no current plans to join the industry; and it sees potential in the large number of people out of work during the pandemic.

WiseTech executive director Richard White told The Australian that the tech sector would need to broaden its current pool of prospective employees to meet its targets. “Tech is going to be a major, major employer in the next 10 years … we need to reach a broader number of Australians. We need more female tech workers, we need more of everyone,” he said on Sunday.

“It will take upskilling and cross-skilling and reskilling existing workers … The benefit to Australia will be immense: these are high-value, really stable jobs.”

The TCA tech jobs road map states efforts to keep growing the number of new Australian tech start-up companies will create 26,000 new jobs alone and add an extra $6bn in value by 2030.

Scaling up more early-stage Australian tech companies will create 43,000 jobs and add $10bn in value.

Attracting investment from large multinationals and creating bigger-scale tech firms will result in 101,000 new jobs and $22bn in extra value.

Business and government efforts to increase tech job creation and investment by businesses outside of the tech sector will create 258,000 new jobs and $45bn in value.

The industry has already pumped $167bn into the economy and employed 861,000 Aus­tralians, fuelled by a 65,000 jobs boom during the pandemic.

The Australian revealed the creation of the TCA in August and more than 35 tech firms and start-ups have joined the organisation in the past few months.

Mina Radhakrishnan, co-founder of property management tech start-up Different, said on Sunday increased venture funding was the other key to ensuring the sector continued to grow.

“We did our Series B financing round recently and it was followed by a queue of job adverts. Companies need to grow and exist to make jobs, and we need venture funding,” she said.

Technology Council of Australia chief executive Kate Pounder said on Sunday she was looking to work directly with state and federal ministers on re-skilling existing workers.

“The reality is that we are only filling so many jobs from the traditional routes of migration and new graduates,” she said.

“So part of the solution is helping people understand what kind of jobs we have on offer, the pay rates, and what kind of businesses they can work for.

“A lot of people probably don’t know what companies like ­Atlassian do.

“We are also planning roundtables with state and federal ministers so we can look at how we can reskill Australians.”

Ms Pounder, who came into the tech world after she was made redundant from her job as a Ten Network executive while on mat­ernity leave in 2012, encouraged more women – who have lost the most work in lockdown – to join the blossoming industry.

“I had two babies, and being made redundant was quite a shock, and there were not a lot of media jobs readily available in Canberra … but in a 30-minute window I found an advert on Seek.com and it changed my life,” she said.

“It’s a great sector for women … The gender pay gap is much lower than in a lot of other ­industries.

“For women who have fallen behind in pay or super, I really recommend the tech sector.”