The make-up of the workforce is changing, with rapid growth in blue-collar jobs offsetting a decline in white-collar work.

What Australia can learn from the US

For Australia, the United States offers a useful leading indicator, because it sits at the frontier of technology adoption. The pattern emerging in the US is not one of widespread collapse, but of uneven and targeted disruption.

Recent data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics show the sharpest declines in routine, information-processing roles — especially customer support, administrative work, and software and IT services. There are more moderate declines across marketing, banking, travel and retail.

These are precisely the kinds of sectors that employ large numbers of people in the Australian economy, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics labour force data.