AI boom threatens Australia’s housing pipeline as skilled-worker shortage deepens

Australia’s artificial-intelligence boom is competing with housebuilding for the same electricians, technicians and skilled tradespeople, threatening to widen an already serious workforce shortage.

The Powering Skills Organisation, a government-established jobs and skills commission, estimates that the country will need another 72,000 workers in these fields by 2030. Last year, it forecast an energy-worker shortfall of 42,000. The commission said competition for workers has accelerated and is likely to continue for years rather than follow a normal economic cycle.

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We have multiple national priorities that are simultaneously competing for the same electricians, technicians and skilled trades workers.

Data-centre construction is a major driver of the growing gap. Treasury expects the sector to be worth about $150 billion by the end of the decade. The report estimates that data centres alone will require an additional 13,000 energy trades workers. Australia had about 162 operational data centres in March, with another 130 proposed.

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And we can see that this pressure is expected to persist over many years rather than follow a normal economic cycle.

“We have multiple national priorities that are simultaneously competing for the same electricians, technicians and skilled trades workers,” PSO chief executive Anthea Middleton told ABC. She said the government’s data-centre push now competes with the Housing Accord target of 1.2 million homes and the renewable-energy transition.

Dean Spicer, whose Melbourne business makes electrical cables for data centres, said staff are increasingly being “snapped up” by construction projects. “It’s devastating because you’ve got a real opportunity to grow your business but in the sector that we’re working, often fixed price, we’re unable to compete with the rates and conditions being offered in that space,” he said. The government has urged data-centre and AI infrastructure developers to invest in local workers through apprenticeships and other training pathways.

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It’s devastating because you’ve got a real opportunity to grow your business but in the sector that we’re working, often fixed price, we’re unable to compete with the rates and conditions being offered in that space.