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Jobs in Shortage in Australia 2026: The Full List

10 min read

Quick answer: In 2026, Australia's official shortage data still points to 2025 as the most recent full assessment: 29% of occupations assessed (293 of 1,022) were in shortage nationally, down from 33% in 2024. Healthcare, aged and disability care, education and the trades carry most of that shortage, with roles like Registered Nurses and Aged and Disabled Carers rated in shortage in every state. Regional Australia has it worse than the cities, with 21 occupations short only outside the capitals. This list is useful for a career changer, but shortage does not mean easy entry, most of these roles still need a qualification or registration first.

If you want to know which roles you are already close to before you plan a move, start with the free Career Change Check.

Why most "in-demand jobs" lists are useless to you

Search "in-demand jobs Australia" and you'll get listicles built for employers justifying visa sponsorship and migration agents selling a service. They mix in occupations no career changer without years of study could touch, think surgeons, geologists, orchestral musicians, and rarely say what state the shortage applies to.

This isn't that. This is the Occupation Shortage List (OSL), the dataset Jobs and Skills Australia (JSA), a federal government body, publishes each year, read the way a 43-year-old claims officer or a call centre team leader would read it: which occupations are hardest to fill, which of those jobs could I plausibly move into, and what do I need to get there.

What "in shortage" means, in plain language

JSA doesn't just count job ads. Each year it assesses close to a thousand occupations using vacancy fill rates (how many roles employers can actually fill), recruitment difficulty reported by employers, and how many suitably qualified applicants turn up for each vacancy. An occupation is then rated as being in shortage nationally, in a state or territory, in metro areas, in regional areas, or not in shortage at all.

That last point matters. A job can be in shortage in regional Queensland and fine in Sydney. The OSL's ratings tool lets you filter by state and by metro versus regional, so if you're planning a move to a specific place, check that level rather than the national headline (Jobs and Skills Australia, Occupation Shortage List data tool).

None of this measures how "good" a job is, pay, hours and job security aren't part of the rating. A role can be in shortage because employers won't pay enough or conditions are rough: for care and service occupations specifically, JSA names low pay, poor conditions and retention problems as a leading driver of shortage, not a lack of interested workers (Jobs and Skills Australia, October 2025).

The 2026 picture: fewer shortages, but the gaps that remain are stubborn

The most recent full assessment, the 2025 Occupation Shortage List published in October 2025, found 29% of the 1,022 occupations assessed were in shortage nationally, 293 occupations. That's down from 33% in 2024 and 36% in 2023, JSA's third straight year of improvement (Jobs and Skills Australia, October 2025).

Read that the way it deserves to be read: the labour market has loosened, not collapsed. Employers are finding it a bit easier to fill roles, largely because more qualified applicants are showing up and fewer employers are reporting serious recruitment difficulty. That's a genuinely different story to the "skills crisis" headlines from 2022 and 2023, and worth knowing if you've been putting off a move because you assumed nothing was hiring.

But the shortages that are left aren't evenly spread, and they aren't going anywhere fast. JSA identifies 139 occupations that have been in shortage every single year since 2021, a five-year run. Trades and technician roles dominate that persistent list, and healthcare and education aren't far behind. Nationally, JSA reports that nearly half of trade occupations and around two in five professional occupations remain in shortage, concentrated in health, education and construction (Jobs and Skills Australia, October 2025).

The most current quarterly read, the Occupation Shortage Report for the December 2025 quarter, published 12 March 2026, shows the national vacancy fill rate at 70.7%, up 2.1 percentage points on the year before. Skill Level 3 occupations, the tier that includes many Certificate III/IV and diploma-level roles such as aged care, community services and paraprofessional coordination, are still the hardest to fill, at just 54.5% (Jobs and Skills Australia, December 2025 report). That gap, easing overall conditions but a stuck Skill Level 3 tier, is roughly where a lot of career changers coming out of admin, claims and call centre roles are aiming to land.

Shortage jobs a career changer can actually reach

Most shortage-list coverage leads with surgeons, civil engineers and construction managers. Skip those. Here's what's realistic if you're coming from admin, customer service, claims handling or a call centre floor, without going back to university for four years.

Health support and nursing. Registered Nurses are rated in shortage nationally and in every state and territory (Jobs and Skills Australia, Registered Nurses occupation profile). That's a multi-year study commitment, but it's the clearest, most durable shortage on the list, and there are shorter entry points, enrolled nursing, allied health assistant work, that sit underneath it and draw on the same customer-facing, detail-heavy skills a claims or admin background gives you.

Aged care and disability support. Aged and Disabled Carers are rated in shortage nationally and in every jurisdiction, driven largely by retention problems rather than a lack of applicants (Jobs and Skills Australia, Aged and Disabled Carers occupation profile). Entry typically runs through a Certificate III, months rather than years, and the skills overlap with call centre and admin work more than people expect: documentation, scheduling, dealing with distressed people on the phone or in person, working inside a compliance framework.

Community services and coordination. This is the space where JSA's own findings and a claims or admin background line up most closely. Community and personal service shortages have been persistent rather than shrinking, and coordination-heavy roles, case work, community support, care coordination, reward the exact skills a claims officer or contact-centre veteran already has: managing a caseload, following a process under time pressure, translating policy into a plain-language conversation with someone who's stressed. Coordination itself isn't always a standalone shortage category on the OSL, but it's the bridge into sectors that are.

If you're weighing a move into NDIS coordination roles or claims roles specifically, treat the shortage list as context, not a guarantee. It tells you the sector is short-staffed. It doesn't tell you a specific employer will hire you tomorrow without the right ticket. For a fuller map of realistic moves from admin, claims and customer service work, see our guide to career change pathways.

Early childhood education. Also named repeatedly by JSA as a top shortage area, and one with a Certificate III entry point and steady demand independent of the economic cycle.

By state, and metro versus regional

The OSL rates every occupation at the national level and again for each state and territory, so the honest answer to "is my job in shortage in my state" is to check the JSA tool directly for your occupation and location rather than trust a generic list (Jobs and Skills Australia, Occupation Shortage List data tool). Shortage ratings can and do differ sharply between, say, Western Sydney and regional Western Australia.

What is consistent nationally is that regional Australia has it worse. JSA identifies 21 occupations that are in shortage exclusively outside the capital cities, meaning employers in regional areas are struggling to fill roles that city employers are managing fine (Jobs and Skills Australia, October 2025). The quarterly data backs this up from a different angle: regional fill rates rose 5.6 percentage points over the year to December 2025, reaching 68.6%, against 71.8% in metro areas. The gap between city and regional hiring difficulty is now the narrowest it's been since 2023, at 3.2 percentage points, but it hasn't closed (Jobs and Skills Australia, December 2025 report).

Practically: if you're open to relocating, even an hour or two out of a capital city measurably widens the shortage-driven opportunity set, particularly in care, health support and trades-adjacent coordination roles. State-by-state ratings vary by the exact occupation, not just the broad job family. Checking the live OSL data tool confirms Registered Nurses and Aged and Disabled Carers are both rated in shortage in every state and territory, but within a single job family the picture can differ a lot: some Registered Nurse specialisations are rated in shortage nationwide and in every state, while others are rated in shortage only in specific states or only in regional areas. Check the tool for your exact occupation and state before you commit to a move (Jobs and Skills Australia, Occupation Shortage List data tool).

How to use a shortage list without getting burned

A shortage rating is not a job offer, and it's not a signal that a role is easy to get into. Three things to check before you treat any occupation on this list as your next move.

First, licensing and registration. Nursing, most allied health roles and some community services positions require a recognised qualification and, in health, formal registration before you can be employed, not just enrolled in a course. Build that lead time into your plan.

Second, shortage doesn't mean low competition for entry-level positions. Employers mostly report difficulty filling experienced and specialist roles, not necessarily graduate or new-entrant spots, where there can still be plenty of applicants.

Third, a national or state rating tells you nothing about a specific employer, suburb or roster. Aged care and disability work can vary enormously in pay and conditions between providers even within the same "shortage" occupation. Treat the list as a filter for where to start researching, not a guarantee of a smooth or well-paid transition.

Before you commit to a specific pathway, it's worth understanding how exposed your current role is to AI-driven change, since that's often the real driver of the decision to move at all. If your admin, claims or customer service job is showing up in conversations about automation, our breakdown of at-risk jobs in Australia is a useful companion read to this list.

FAQ

Is Australia still short of workers in 2026? Yes, but less than in previous years. The most recent full assessment (October 2025) found 29% of occupations in shortage nationally, down from 33% in 2024 and 36% in 2023. Some sectors, particularly health, aged and disability care, education and the trades, remain persistently short-staffed even as the overall figure eases (Jobs and Skills Australia, October 2025).

What jobs are most in demand in Australia right now? Healthcare and care-sector roles top the list: Registered Nurses and Aged and Disabled Carers are both rated in shortage in every state and territory. Early childhood education and skilled trades are also consistently named. For a career changer without a clinical background, aged care, disability support and community coordination roles are the most realistic entry points (Jobs and Skills Australia occupation profiles, 2025).

Does a shortage list mean I'll get hired easily? No. A shortage rating reflects how hard employers say it is to fill vacancies overall, it doesn't guarantee an easy path for a new entrant, especially into experienced or specialist positions. Licensing, registration and Certificate III/IV requirements still apply in most shortage occupations relevant to career changers, so factor in training time before assuming quick entry.

Are regional jobs more in shortage than city jobs in Australia? Yes. Jobs and Skills Australia identifies 21 occupations that are in shortage exclusively in regional areas, and regional vacancy fill rates, while improving faster than metro rates, still sit below the city average (68.6% versus 71.8% at December 2025). If you can relocate even a short distance from a capital city, the shortage-driven opportunity set widens.

Where can I check if my specific occupation is in shortage? Jobs and Skills Australia publishes the Occupation Shortage List as a searchable data tool at jobsandskills.gov.au, filterable by occupation, state and territory, and metro versus regional status. That's the most current and locally specific source, more reliable than any third-party "top jobs" listicle, including this one for anything beyond the headline national figures.

What to do with this list

A shortage rating tells you where employers are struggling. It doesn't tell you whether a move makes sense for you, your finances, your family, or your timeline. Most people in your boat, coming from admin, claims or call centre work and weighing a change, get more value from starting with a clear picture of their own risk and options than from memorising a national list.

Run the free Career Change Check to see roles people from your kind of work moved into.

Changing Careers provides general information, not licensed career or financial advice.

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Changing Careers
Built from Australian government occupation data.
Last updated: 5 July 2026