Background: Growing demand for finance, technology and business roles presents

Australia’s finance, technology and business (FTB) industry is growing rapidly, driven by demand in specialised industries and for FTB roles in the broader economy. Many of these roles are already challenging to fill, and a significant workforce uplift is expected as the tech workforce reaches 1.2 million by 2030.

The Challenge: Understanding workforce and skills gaps within the workforce

There is an industry need to understand the rapidly changing skills landscape of the workforce and the intersection between traditional workforce structures and a skillset view of workforce needs. While workforce analysis traditionally focuses on occupations and industries, it misses the mismatch between skill sets across roles. For this reason, workforce analysis that considers the underlying skill needs of FTB industries and occupations is critical to supporting the strong growth outlook.

The Solution: Oxford Economics’ workforce and skills modelling

Oxford Economics Australia applied a dynamic stock-and-flow modelling approach to forecast workforce demand and supply out to 2030 within FTB industries and occupations. This analysis identified that additions to the workforce through education, migration and job churn are unlikely to be enough to keep up with strong demand over the forecast period.

Further work was undertaken to model the demand and supply of skillsets within the workforce. This identified that headline workforce shortages do not adequately capture the skills mismatch within FTB industries and occupations. When this is taken into account, the skill shortages are much larger than the workforce gap.

These projections were critical to understanding the challenges ahead of the FTB sector and formed an important evidence base for FSO’s 2025 workforce plan.