{"id":547190,"date":"2026-03-17T23:40:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T23:40:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/547190\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T23:40:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T23:40:15","slug":"the-kids-are-watching-the-ai-job-carnage-what-are-they-going-to-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/547190\/","title":{"rendered":"The kids are watching the AI job carnage. What are they going to do?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Bronte<\/p>\n

March 18, 2026 \u2014 5:10am<\/p>\n

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Last week, Atlassian cut 1600 jobs<\/a> globally, blaming AI. Late last year, University of NSW<\/a> student Ahnaf Rakeen changed his degree<\/a> from a Bachelor of Design to a Bachelor of Architectural Studies. His freelance graphic designer work had become less creative and begun to dry up due to clients using AI themselves<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI realised that this is not going to be worth my time to study in university \u2026 it\u2019s already this bad, imagine after my degree is completed, I would not be needed at all,\u201d says 19-year-old Rakeen.<\/p>\n

\u201cAI can\u2019t just go in person and measure parts in buildings and draw everything to scale,\u201d Rakeen says of his switch to architecture in November. \u201cI feel like that\u2019s something that will take a lot more time \u2026 for AI to be able to do.\u201d <\/p>\n

An AI-induced wave of disruption is tearing through Australia\u2019s white-collar workforce<\/a>, and not everyone has been lucky enough to get ahead of it like Rakeen.<\/p>\n

Before Atlassian\u2019s recent job cuts, Afterpay\u2019s parent company Block slashed more than 4000 jobs<\/a>, WiseTech axed 2000<\/a>, and Amazon slashed 16,000. Salesforce, Pinterest and CrowdStrike have also joined in on the bloodletting<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"Atlassian<\/a><\/p>\n

Most of the casualties have been in tech, which University of Sydney Business School Professor Clinton Free says demonstrates the case that \u201cyesterday\u2019s growth occupations are not automatically tomorrow\u2019s safe occupations\u201d.<\/p>\n

Technology-related roles were among the fastest-growing occupations in Australia from November 2020 to November 2025, and are, according to a report<\/a> published by American artificial intelligence company Anthropic earlier this month, among the top occupations heavily exposed to AI disruption<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The scope of this disruption is, currently, something we will only be able to understand in hindsight. As Free puts it: \u201cThe technology is moving faster than the official labour statistics.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re still very much in the early stages of this transformation,\u201d Indeed Australia senior economist Callam Pickering echoes. \u201cA lot of what we say about AI is speculative.\u201d<\/p>\n

What compounds the confusion is this: short-term storylines, for many reasons, are not lining up with long-term forecasts. Australia\u2019s Commonwealth Bank, for example, had to reverse its decision<\/a> to replace 45 call centre jobs with AI chatbots last year, after the move backfired and increased call volumes.<\/p>\n

Teachers, tradies, aged care and healthcare roles are among the top occupations projected<\/a> to grow by 2050, as are cleaners and hospitality workers. But according to data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the latter two were among the top 10 fastest-shrinking occupations between November 2024 and November 2025.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"Thousands<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t truly know how this is going to play out,\u201d adds Pickering. How can we ask future white-collar workers to choose which career path to follow in this uncertainty?<\/p>\n

How the emerging white-collar workforce is preparing for AI armageddon<\/p>\n

Dr Janine Dixon, who is the director of the Centre of Policy Studies at Victoria University, helped model the labour market impact of generative AI for Jobs and Skills Australia. The final report<\/a>, released in September, showed there was \u201cabsolutely no occupation that was completely immune from AI\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"UniversityUniversity of NSW civil engineering student Rifah Tamanna, 21, sees AI as an opportunity to augment her work, rather than replace it, though she is worried about its environmental impact. Ahnaf Rakeen, 19, switched to studying architecture over concerns there would be no graphic design work by the time he graduated due to AI. Audrey Richardson<\/p>\n

That does not mean workers \u2013 white-collar or otherwise \u2013 should panic. Dixon\u2019s simulation found augmentation \u2013 people working with AI \u2013 was \u201cby far the more widespread and larger effect\u201d than automation, which is when AI \u201cdoes your job, and you don\u2019t have a job any more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Related Article\"Stephanie<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe best way you can future-proof yourself is to know how to use [AI],\u201d says Dixon. \u201cOtherwise, you\u2019re going to be a disadvantage relative to the people who do know how to use it.\u201d<\/p>\n

University graduates that will be more in demand for employers, careers consultant Helen Green says, are those who can demonstrate they are embracing technology.<\/p>\n

Last year was when Green, who is the director of Melbourne firm Career Confident, noticed year 12 students and parents were becoming increasingly concerned about the impact of AI on their employment opportunities, particularly as the cost of tertiary qualifications increase.<\/p>\n

But Green warns students against pursuing a degree in a field they\u2019re not passionate about because it\u2019s expected to grow in the age of AI; that path often leads to unfinished diplomas and a mountain of student debt.<\/p>\n

\u201cHalf the careers they\u2019ll be working in haven\u2019t been invented yet,\u201d says Green. She emphasises developing transferable skills \u2013 human skills \u2013 that AI doesn\u2019t have: communication, creativity, and critical thinking. \u201cYoung people who are adaptable and have good people skills will always find work.\u201d<\/p>\n

That mentality is something Justin Peat, head of futures at Melbourne\u2019s St Leonard\u2019s College, is instilling in his students with seminars, where industry professionals from multiple sectors reflect on their careers.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

At first, Peat says the speakers focused on their unpredictable career journeys \u2013 and how their \u201cdistinctly human capabilities\u201d such as resilience, curiosity and ethical judgement steered them \u2013 to show students they \u201cshouldn\u2019t anticipate a linear, predictable pathway\u201d after graduating high school, and how to prepare for it.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"UNSW<\/a><\/p>\n

In the past two years, however, speakers have been asked to respond to specific questions about the impact of AI on their particular sector.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese industry leaders themselves are a little bit unsure of what the future brings, but that honesty in and around the discussion just highlights the need to be comfortable with uncertainty,\u201d says Peat. <\/p>\n

Third-year civil and humanitarian engineering student Rifah Tamanna is already seeing the value of that practice. Instead of focusing on coding, which she\u2019s \u201cnot the best at\u201d, she can outsource that to generative AI and focus on the aspects of the job she\u2019s most passionate about: working with people and communities.<\/p>\n

\u201cAI can\u2019t go abroad to a developing country and ask the people what they actually lack \u2026 you have to go to the place and analyse how the people work, how the people live, to give them a solution,\u201d says Tamanna.<\/p>\n

\u201cAI can give you a solution to the maths problem, but if you can\u2019t come up with the problem in the first place, or define the problem properly in the first place, it\u2019s really hard to actually come up with a solution that\u2019s going to work, that\u2019s going to stick.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Morning Edition newsletter is our guide to the day\u2019s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\"BronteBronte Gossling<\/a> is a reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, WAtoday and Brisbane Times.Connect via email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"March 18, 2026 \u2014 5:10am Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547191,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-547190","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547190\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}