AI Adoption: Which Jobs Face the Greatest Risk

The Australian government has released its first national report on the impact of neural networks on the labor market. It found that women and university graduates face the greatest risk of being replaced by AI.

Which jobs are under the greatest threat?

The document was prepared by Australia's Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR) and is the first systematic study of its kind at the federal level. The authors identified the categories of work most vulnerable to automation: occupations whose everyday tasks AI can already perform.

• Highest risk of replacement: telemarketers, advertising and marketing workers, accountants
• Women with higher education make up a disproportionately large share of these professions
• Lowest risk: electricians, plumbers, builders and other vocationally trained specialists
• As of July 2026, no mass layoffs caused by AI have been recorded in Australia
• The report is the first document of this scale at the national level in the country

Crucially, the authors do not claim that a crisis has already occurred. AI has not yet triggered a wave of layoffs; the report is a preventive analysis of vulnerabilities. The government wants to understand in advance where the risk is concentrated so it can build targeted retraining policies.

Why has a degree stopped being a shield?

Higher education has traditionally been seen as the best insurance against technological unemployment. The report turns that logic on its head: AI primarily threatens routine cognitive tasks such as data analysis, drafting text, following scripts and processing financial transactions. These are precisely the functions that have historically required a university education.

Trades with a high level of vocational training, such as electricians, plumbers and carpenters, turned out to be in a safer position. Their work requires physical presence, constant adaptation to non-standard conditions and fine motor skills. Today's AI systems handle these far worse than they handle information processing.

The gender dimension of the findings is especially significant: women are disproportionately employed in the vulnerable occupations. Without targeted measures, automation risks deepening existing inequality in the labor market, and the government has now officially recorded this risk for the first time.

What this means

The Australian report is one of the first government documents to systematically map AI risks by occupation at the national level. Its key conclusion is that technological vulnerability is determined not by level of education but by the nature of the tasks performed. For policymakers and employers, this is a signal to rework retraining programs: not around abstract "digital skills" but around the specific occupational groups at risk.

Which professions will artificial intelligence replace?

According to the Australian government's report, telemarketers, advertising workers and accountants face the highest risk of being replaced by neural networks.