Is your call centre job at risk from AI? What the 2026 government data says
3 min read
You are worried about AI and your call centre job. You are not imagining it, and you are not alone. The Australian Government has now put a number on it.
What the government actually found
In July 2026, the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR) published its first monitoring report on AI and employment in Australia. It uses Jobs and Skills Australia (JSA) exposure scores to rank every occupation by how much of the work AI can already do.
Call or Contact Centre Workers sit in the most-exposed fifth of all occupations. So do Keyboard Operators, General Clerks, Receptionists, and Accounting Clerks. If you work in a contact centre, an admin team, or a back-office processing role, the government's own data puts you in the highest-exposure group.
Since November 2022, employment in the most-exposed occupations grew 5.6 per cent, compared with 9.5 per cent in the least-exposed occupations. Job ads and hours worked have also grown more slowly in the most-exposed group, and unemployment for workers leaving those roles has risen, closing the gap with everyone else to its narrowest in at least 20 years. Most of that softening has happened since the start of 2024.
Call or Contact Centre Workers is the one occupation among the six most-exposed that is actually below its November 2022 employment level. That is not a forecast. It is the current trend.
The honest caveat
The government is careful about what this means. The report calls the signal "modest and tentative" and says there is no evidence of broad AI-driven job loss in Australia. A one-standard-deviation more-exposed occupation was about 2 per cent below its pre-ChatGPT employment trend by February 2026.
Clerical and admin work was already shrinking before ChatGPT launched. AI adds to a trend that was already there. This is not mass redundancy, and no one can say exactly when or how fast it will move. But the direction is clear, and the data says it is accelerating.
Who this affects
The most-exposed occupations are staffed mostly by women, with an average age of about 41. Many do not hold a university degree. If that sounds like you, you are exactly who this data is about. You are not a niche case.
What a sensible next step looks like
The data does not say "quit your job". It says: understand your own exposure, and start moving toward a lower-exposure role while you still have a payslip and time.
Care and health-support roles, such as aged and disabled care and nursing support, are among the least-exposed and have held up. They are not the only option, but they are the clearest example of where the exposure gap works in your favour. A call centre operator's transferable skills are more portable than most people realise.
The move does not have to be dramatic. A sideways step into a role where the human part of the work is the point, not the overhead, is often enough. You can see the full list of at-risk roles and the pathways into health admin that other workers in your position are taking.
Where to start
Our free 3-minute Career Change Check asks your job title and what you do in a normal week, then shows roles people from your kind of work moved into. No sign-up needed. Email is only asked for at the result step.
You have time. Use it while the choice is yours.
Source: DEWR 2026, AI and employment in Australia: Monitoring framework and evidence to date, July 2026. Data to February 2026. https://www.dewr.gov.au/workplace-relations/resources/ai-and-employment-australia
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