The nation's workforce is changing rapidly as Australians study more, some jobs become redundant and an ageing population demands greater care.
The 2021 census, released in part today, shows technology and healthcare are transforming the labour market.
In the decade to August 2021, the health and community services workforce grew by 50 per cent — almost 600,000 extra employees.
Many of the fastest-growing jobs are those that provide care for older people, and coincide with the growth of the national disability insurance scheme.
They include aged and disabled carers (110 per cent increase over a decade), occupational therapists (up 110 per cent), and audiologists and speech pathologists (up 100 per cent).
Australia's tech workforce expanded even more quickly over the same period, growing by 164 per cent.
Computer programmers (up 91 per cent) and business and systems analysts (up 69 per cent) were particularly sought-after.
The Australian Statistician, David Gruen, noted both industries relied on skilled migrants to meet growing demand.
More than four in 10 nurses and carers were born overseas, he said.
"A 40 per cent share born of overseas is significantly higher than the average across all occupations, of 32 per cent," Dr Gruen said.
Meanwhile, two-thirds of computer programmers were overseas-born, with India the main source of workers.
Census data released in June showed India had become the second-largest source of migrants to Australia.
Automation is also changing the workforce, albeit gradually.
Typists, for example, were among the largest cohorts of Australian workers just 30 years ago. There were 41,000 keyboard operators left last year, down from 228,000 in 1991.
The farming workforce has also shrunk dramatically, down from 212,000 staff a generation ago (in 1991) to 140,000.
Agriculture now has the oldest employees of any industry.
When school's finished, we keep studying
The latest census was the first to show that most Australian adults gained a qualification after leaving school.
Among people aged 15 and older, 51.7 per cent had finished a certificate, diploma or degree.
That compared with fewer than one in four people a generation earlier.
In fact, a master's degree is now almost as common as a bachelor's degree was 30 years ago.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) said the fastest-growing areas of study were security science and artificial intelligence.
Dr Gruen noted migrants were more likely than other Australians to have a post-school qualification, especially those who came from India and Bangladesh (both 82 per cent).
A snapshot of pandemic Australia
The census — a national household questionnaire carried out every five years — took place amid the worsening COVID-19 pandemic in August 2021.
At the time, Sydneysiders and Melburnians were in lockdown, and residents of regional New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT were about to join them.
The data collected shows some of the effects of those health restrictions.
More than 7 per cent of workers worked no hours at all in the week before the census. That compares with 3 per cent in the previous census.
The pandemic also effectively toppled some industries while fuelling the growth of others.
The number of Australians working as tourism and travel advisers more than halved compared with the previous census in 2016.
Meanwhile, the ranks of delivery drivers increased by more than 70 per cent.
Dr Gruen said the latest data, when explored in detail, would provide "fascinating insights" into Australians' working lives during a pandemic.
