Australian Firms Adopting AI Are Hiring More, Not Less

The most common objection to AI adoption in Australian SMEs isn’t cost, complexity, or compliance. It’s jobs. Business owners worry that investing in AI means eventually needing fewer people. New research from CSIRO, published in the Australian Journal of Labour Economics this month, says the opposite is true — and has three years of hiring data from more than 4,000 Australian firms to back it up.

The headline finding: companies that adopted AI posted 36% more non-AI job advertisements than comparable firms that hadn’t adopted AI. Not more AI specialist roles. More of everything — admin, operations, client-facing positions. The firms leaning into AI were scaling their teams faster across the board.

The study, led by Dr Claire Mason at CSIRO’s Workforce and Productivity research team, tracked online job advertisements from AI-adopting and non-adopting firms between 2020 and 2023. The researchers identified adopters through signals in their job postings, then compared both groups’ hiring trajectories over three years.

Firms across the board increased hiring during the period. But AI adopters did so at a significantly faster rate. The more telling detail is what happened to roles directly exposed to AI — positions like accountants, lawyers, and analysts where AI can automate a meaningful share of the work. In non-adopting firms, demand for these AI-exposed roles showed a slight but statistically significant decline. In AI-adopting firms, it didn’t. The businesses actually using AI were still hiring for the roles AI could theoretically replace.

The explanation isn’t counterintuitive once you see it. AI redistributes tasks within a role rather than eliminating the role itself. A firm that automates document review doesn’t fire its paralegals. It has them handle more matters, which creates demand for more support staff, which generates capacity for more clients. The work expands to fill the new capability.

For trades business owners, the implication is practical. AI-powered scheduling, quoting, and job management tools don’t replace your office coordinator — they let your coordinator handle the workload of a growing operation without hiring a second one prematurely. When you do hire next, the role is broader: less data entry, more client coordination and problem-solving. That’s a better job, and a more attractive one in a tight labour market.

For professional services firms, the data is even more direct. Accountants and lawyers were explicitly among the AI-exposed occupations studied — and the firms using AI tools for document processing, compliance checks, and research weren’t reducing headcount in those roles. They were growing. The study also found AI-related skills appearing in unexpected job ads: sales representatives, security officers, architects. AI literacy is becoming a baseline expectation across the workforce, not a specialist requirement.

We’ve written before about the training gap being the biggest barrier to AI adoption in the trades. This week’s CSIRO data adds a reason to close that gap faster: the firms investing in AI aren’t just keeping pace operationally. They’re scaling their teams while competitors plateau.

The CSIRO findings flip the usual AI anxiety. The risk isn’t that adopting AI costs you people. It’s that not adopting it costs you growth. Non-adopting firms in the study saw declining demand for the very roles AI could enhance. They didn’t lose those jobs overnight — but the trajectory was heading down while their AI-adopting competitors were expanding.

For a 15-person accounting practice or a trades business running six crews, the question isn’t “will AI replace my team?” It’s “will AI let me add the next person — or the next crew — without the back-office bottleneck that’s been holding me back?”

Start with the one workflow where your team spends the most time on tasks AI could handle: reconciliation, scheduling, document drafting, compliance checks. That’s your entry point. Not a restructure. A single workflow, measured before and after.

Key takeaways

Worried AI means fewer jobs at your firm?

The data says the opposite — but only if you adopt it deliberately. A short conversation is enough to identify where AI fits in your operation and how to bring your team along. Book a call to talk it through.