Technological advancements have revolutionised how we work, live and learn, making digital skills increasingly necessary across various roles and industries. Today, all workers are expected to be digitally informed, at a minimum.

Over the last five years, the workforce has transformed with rapid increases in demand for digital skills.

This trend shows no signs of slowing down. There is a projected 47 percent growth in the digital expert workforce (over 420,000 additional workers) in the five years to 2026.

There has also been increasing expectations of workers to be digitally enabled to perform their job functions effectively and efficiently.

However, Australia’s supply of digitally skilled workers by 2026 will fall short by 130,000 digital expert and 242,000 digitally enabled workers.

Australia’s ability to meet this demand is limited by three challenges

The three challenges facing Australia’s future digital workforce are:

1. there aren’t enough people training to become digital workers
2. learners are not being taught the skills that industry demands, resulting in suboptimal training and employment outcomes
3. the training system isn’t flexible enough to quickly adjust to what industries need.