Australian data centre job postings grew 2.5 times in the last year. Is a job boom on the horizon?

In what has been compared to the mining sector boom of the 2000s, data centres are poised to shake up an already dynamic yet fragile job market.

As Australia’s AI investment moves into a more actionable and impactful phase, job seekers are anticipating a jobs boom – but will data centres truly move the needle?

According to the Commonwealth Bank, data centre investment is forecast to reach approximately $150 billion in the next four years, which, the bank estimates, will add 0.2 percentage points to real GDP growth in 2026 and 2027.

And it seems that job seekers are already looking to capitalise, with Indeed research finding that investments are already flowing through to the job market. Since December 2025, job searches related to data centres have increased 160 per cent, and around 1 per cent of Australian job postings mentioned data centres – 2.5 times higher than a year ago.

According to Indeed senior APAC economist Callam Pickering, “while much of the focus on AI has centred on its potential impact on existing jobs – from task automation to reshaping entire occupations – its greatest near-term impact may instead come from the infrastructure needed to enable AI usage at scale.”

“From a jobs standpoint, the data centre boom has three stages: construction, operations, and maintenance. So we’ll see a short-term uplift in construction employment, supported by the hiring of operations staff and maintenance workers.”

However, he warned that the strong demand for workers across construction and related sectors is likely to put upward pressure on wages, with skills shortages also anticipated to continue.

While workers with transferable skills will likely be drawn to these high-paying opportunities, Pickering said that construction businesses “may need to lift wages to retain staff or attract new workers”.

While the infrastructure boom will only last as long as data centres need to be built, Pickering noted that the sharp increase in data centre-related job searches “speaks to the growing awareness of data centres and recognition of the opportunities created by this investment boom.”

Further, he noted that job creation has been identified beyond the tech sector, with the vast majority of data centre job postings in the 2025-26 financial year seeking non-tech employees.

While around 27 per cent of job postings were for IT infrastructure operations and support and software development, around 14 per cent were for management, as well as almost 9 per cent for installation and maintenance, 8.7 per cent in electrical engineering and 7.1 per cent in industrial engineering; reflecting, according to Pickering, “the broad range of workers needed to build, operate and maintain large-scale data centre facilities”.

“As investment gathers pace and new projects attract greater attention, we expect jobseeker interest to push even higher,” Pickering said.

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