When posting a job ad, consider including a detail that's often overlooked: the specific AI tools used in the role. SEEK’s September Employment Report shows mentions of Claude in job ads are up 274% quarter on quarter. Gemini mentions are up 156%.
Prompt engineering, a skill that barely existed a few years ago, is up 150%. Agentic AI mentions have nearly tripled year on year, at 199.2%, the fastest growing AI category in the data. Generative AI mentions grew 31.3% year on year, and AI ethics and governance skills are climbing fast too, up 10.2% month on month and 159.6% year on year.
Employment Hero’s own hiring data shows a steeper version of the same trend. AI-related job postings there are up 607.9% year on year and 41.7% quarter on quarter, now making up 1.10% of all new listings on its platform.
SEEK Chief Economist Dr Blair Chapman points to where that demand is concentrating. “The majority of AI mentions are within Information & Communication Technology, where references appear in 14.9% of job ads, followed by Marketing & Communications (8.4%) and Advertising, Arts & Media (5.8%),” he said.
AI-related skills now appear in 2.4% of all job ads nationally, up 3.8% month on month and 70.2% year on year. New South Wales leads with 3.1% of job ads mentioning AI skills, followed by Victoria at 2.8%.
The roles disappearing
The flip side of that trend is which roles are losing ground. Job ads for roles with high automation exposure, the kind of repetitive, process-heavy work AI tools handle reasonably well, fell 12.5% year on year. Roles with medium automation exposure dropped 5.7%, while roles that are hard to automate, such as trade work, declined just 2.4%.
Hiring overall isn’t shrinking. SEEK’s national data shows job ad volumes rose 0.6% month on month in September, with the annual rate of decline easing to -3.5%. The market is sorting roles by how automatable they are, and pulling back fastest on the ones AI already handles well, even as overall hiring activity improves.
That caution shows up on the employer side too. Employment Hero’s Employment Index, drawn from 1.7 million employees on its platform, shows Australian SME headcount rose 0.8% in September, the strongest monthly gain since May, but quarterly headcount growth of 1.1% is still near its lowest in two years. Wage growth dropped sharply over the same period, falling to 2.2% year on year from 4.5% in August.
“With the cash rate at 4.60% and costs still high, many are weighing every hiring decision very carefully,” said James Keene, Managing Director APAC at Employment Hero. “Business owners tell us that they’ve absorbed months of higher costs and keeping their teams together is coming ahead of offering pay rises. This suggests many hirers are being very selective about adding headcount until costs and rates settle.”
With hiring budgets this tight, a vague job ad competing for attention is a worse bet than a specific one.
Where this is happening fastest
Consumer Services led overall job ad growth in September, driven by Retail & Consumer Products (up 3.4% month on month) and Hospitality & Tourism (up 2.4% month on month and 7.1% over the quarter, the fastest of any industry). Reservations, Gaming, and Travel Agent and Airline roles all saw double digit hiring growth over the quarter.
Chapman says that growth is notable given the wider backdrop. “Given ongoing cost-of-living pressures, global uncertainty and rising interest rates are weighing on consumer confidence, it is surprising to see increasing labour demand in consumer facing segments. That said, the growth is coming from relatively low levels after notable declines earlier this year.”
Nine of the ten largest hiring industries recorded growth in September, with only Trades & Services remaining flat. Mining, Resources & Energy, Engineering and Construction posted the strongest annual growth nationally, while Western Australia and South Australia were the only states or territories to record both monthly and annual job ad growth.
Applications per job ad rose 1.7% month on month, continuing a run of growth that’s held since January 2026. “From a candidate perspective, competition for roles remains intense as applications per ad rose in September to a new peak,” Chapman said.
What this means for your next ad
Hiring budgets are tight, candidate competition for each listing is intense, and the market is already sorting roles and candidates by how specifically they relate to AI tools. A few things follow from that.
Name the tool, not the category. “AI skills a plus” doesn’t say enough anymore. Both the SEEK and Employment Hero data show demand concentrating around named platforms and skills like Claude, Gemini and prompt engineering, not the word “AI” on its own. If the role involves a specific tool or workflow, say so in the ad.
Write the role around what’s left for a person to do. For roles with repetitive, process-heavy components, expect more applicants who already use AI to speed that work up, and fewer who want to do it manually. Framing the ad around judgment, oversight and relationships, rather than the process steps AI already covers, tends to attract stronger candidates for what the role will actually become.
Expect more applications than usual. With applications per ad at a new peak nationally, a vaguer ad adds screening work on top of an already stretched hiring process. Specificity filters as much as it attracts.
Weigh the hire against retention. With SME wage growth slowing and headcount growth still near a two-year low, a new role needs to justify itself clearly against the cost of keeping and upskilling existing staff. If the real gap is an AI skill rather than a full headcount need, it’s worth testing whether that gap can be closed internally before advertising externally.