The surprising jobs with the fastest growing salaries - as economist reveals the AI truth all workers need to know

Daily Mail​

21-06-2025

White-collar jobs most at risk of being replaced by AI have surprisingly experienced the fastest double-digit growth in salaries.
Service jobs, rather than occupations requiring manual labour, made up nine of the top 10 roles that have had the biggest annual increase in advertised pay levels.
SEEK senior economist Blair Chapman told Daily Mail Australia said AI was in fact creating more demand for professional roles provided the technology makes workers more efficient during a productivity crisis.
'What a lot of people have been missing in the AI conversation is that AI is there to make people more productive so, yes, it can do a lot of the tasks but that means a person using AI is able to produce more and do more,' he said.
'They're actually more productive so they're actually more valuable to the company.
'There are, in most roles, going to need to be some human intervention still.'
Tax accountants saw average advertised pay surge 24.5 per cent to $95,375 based on positions on SEEK in April.
Seek senior economist Blair Chapman told Daily Mail Australia said AI was creating more demand for white collar roles provided the technology could make professionals more efficient during a productivity crisis
'The one tax consultant can now do multiple client returns, as an example, in a day rather than maybe one or two,' Mr Chapman said.
Analyst roles in the Department of Defence and the federal public services have seen a 26.8 per cent surge in advertised pay to $130,117.
Geopolitical uncertainty has meant AI could in fact help intelligence analysts sift through a lot more data.
'You think about an intelligence analyst trying to analyse thousands of web pages - now AI can do that and flag the most pertinent ones for humans to assess,' he said.
Meanwhile, high immigration levels are fuelling demand for housing but local licensing requirements means Australian citizens are more likely to get construction jobs.
'There are barriers to entry for foreign labour market participants to actually come in and add to supply in those roles,' Mr Chapman said.
The requirement for local construction and trade licences saw a 16.6 per cent increase in advertised salaries to $90,695 for finishers on building projects.
Australia's transition to renewable energy is also creating demand for electrical engineers in the energy space with their salaries soaring by 18.3 per cent to an average of $165,917.
'We've got the renewable energy push which is leading to a lot of demand for electrical engineers,' Mr Chapman said.
At the lower end of the pay scale, shop assistants saw their pay levels rise by 16.2 per cent to $64,027.
Hospitality job ads saw a 15.6 per cent increase to $70,762 for assistant roles.
This was occurring as demand for cafe and restaurant meals continued to increase, even more than three years after Covid lockdowns ended.
'During Covid, people weren't going out as much as they were now there's been a bit of a resurgence in hospitality, especially as there has been a substitution in say international travel to domestic travel and that has encouraged and created more demand for hospitality,' Mr Chapman said.
But in some sectors, advertised pay levels have been growing well below the overall wage price index of 3.4 per cent, despite unemployment still being low at 4.1 per cent.
Manufacturing jobs saw an increase of just 2.6 per cent with Australia now focused on smaller-scale assembly.
'Heavy and medium industrial manufacturing: we stopped doing a lot of that,' Mr Chapman said.
'A lot of manufacturing now is local needs - it's been a big compositional change in manufacturing in Australia.'
Technology, however, is still a threat to some sectors more than others with advertising, arts and media jobs seeing a 0.1 per cent annual decline in advertised salaries, with the likes of Google and Facebook continuing to take advertising revenue away from traditional media.