Which Australian Jobs Are Safe From AI — And Which Ones Aren’t

It’s one of the most-searched questions in Australia right now: is my job safe from AI? New research from Anthropic, backed up by a Herald Sun analysis published this week, gives us the clearest picture yet of which roles are most exposed: and which are likely to hold up. Here’s what the evidence says, and what it means if you’re a small business owner or employee in Australia.

The Research: What Anthropic Found

In March 2026, Anthropic: the company behind the Claude AI assistant: published a landmark paper titled Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence. It’s arguably the most credible analysis of AI job risk to date, because it comes directly from a company that builds the technology and has visibility into how it’s actually being used.

The research introduced a new measure called AI Labour Market Exposure (AIME), which assesses how much of each occupation’s task list can be performed: or significantly augmented: by current AI systems. The findings were striking: exposure is highest for knowledge-intensive white-collar roles, not the manual or trade jobs that earlier automation waves disrupted. As Forbes summarised: “If your job is mostly cognitive, repetitive, and text-based, you’re more exposed than a plumber.”

The Jobs Most at Risk in Australia

According to Anthropic’s research and reporting by Insurance Business Australia and Women’s Agenda, the roles with the highest AI exposure share several characteristics: they involve processing information, producing written outputs, and making decisions based on structured data.

High-risk occupations include:

• Insurance and financial services roles: claims processing, underwriting, financial analysis
• Legal support and paralegal work: document review, contract summarisation, legal research
• Accounting and bookkeeping: data entry, reconciliation, routine reporting
• Customer service and call centres: query resolution, complaint handling, FAQs
• Content writing and copywriting: particularly templated or SEO-driven content
• Data entry and administrative processing: any role where the primary task is moving structured information between systems

Women’s Agenda noted that women are disproportionately represented in many of these roles: particularly administrative, customer service, and clerical positions: meaning the AI displacement risk has a gender dimension that policy-makers are beginning to grapple with.

The Jobs Least at Risk

The Herald Sun‘s analysis this week identified five job categories likely to be resilient to AI, and Anthropic’s research supports the same picture. Jobs that require physical presence, human judgement in unpredictable environments, or deep emotional connection are much harder to automate.

Low-risk occupations include:

• Trades and construction: electricians, plumbers, carpenters, builders. Physical dexterity in varied environments remains well beyond current AI and robotics.
• Healthcare hands-on roles: nurses, aged care workers, physiotherapists, surgeons. AI can assist diagnosis but cannot replace physical care.
• Early childhood education and teaching: relationship-based, emotionally complex, and requiring real-time human adaptation.
• Mental health and counselling: therapeutic relationships depend on human empathy and trust.
• Creative direction and strategy: senior-level creative, brand, and strategic roles that require original thinking, cultural insight, and stakeholder management.

Forbes highlighted six roles Anthropic specifically identified as safest: skilled trades, healthcare workers, teachers, therapists, emergency services, and senior business leaders. The common thread: these jobs require physical presence, emotional intelligence, or the kind of judgement that can’t be reduced to a pattern.

What’s Already Happening: Real-World Examples

This isn’t theoretical anymore. The ABC reported in March 2026 on a software company that had laid off 40% of its staff, with management explicitly citing AI tools taking over tasks previously done by junior developers and QA testers. The Guardian Australia ran a broader analysis asking whether AI is genuinely displacing workers or simply providing cover for cost-cutting restructures: concluding it’s often both.

At the same time, the ACS (Australian Computer Society) reported that AI-related jobs are the fastest-growing category in Australia’s job market, and the International Business Times Australia listed 10 rising AI-adjacent roles transforming the workforce: from prompt engineers to AI ethics officers to machine learning operations specialists.

What This Means for Australian Small Business Owners

If you run a small business, the jobs question cuts two ways: your own role, and the roles of people you employ or might employ.

If you employ people in high-risk roles: This is not a signal to immediately replace your team with AI. It’s a signal to invest in upskilling. An accounts clerk who knows how to use AI tools is far more valuable: and more secure: than one who doesn’t. Introduce tools gradually, train your team, and be transparent about the intent.

If you’re in a high-risk role yourself: The best hedge is to move up the value chain. Accountants who do AI-assisted analysis and strategic advice are safer than those who do manual data entry. Writers who use AI for research and drafting but bring genuine editorial voice and client relationships are safer than those producing templated content.

If you’re hiring: The AI tools available to Australian SMBs now mean that one person with the right tools can do the work that previously required two or three. Factor that into hiring decisions and job design: not to cut corners, but to set realistic expectations and attract candidates who are genuinely curious about the technology.

Australia’s Department of Employment and Workplace Relations has flagged AI workforce impacts as a key policy area for 2026. The national conversation is just getting started: but the research is clear enough now to act on.

Sources and Further Reading

• Anthropic. Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence (March 2026)
• Forbes. Here Are The 6 Safest Jobs With Least AI Risk, According to Anthropic (March 2026)
• Man of Many. Jobs Most (and Least) Likely to be Affected by AI Revealed by Anthropic (March 2026)
• Herald Sun. Five jobs that could future-proof your career from AI, and five that definitely won’t (March 2026)
• ABC News, ‘Something really shifted’: Inside the software company that laid off 40% of its staff (March 2026)
• The Guardian. Will AI take Australian jobs, or is it just an excuse for corporate restructure? (March 2026)
• Women’s Agenda. The great AI displacement is here. Women’s jobs are most at risk (March 2026)
• Insurance Business Australia. Insurance professionals, women most at risk from AI (March 2026)
• ACS. AI jobs are the fastest growing in Australia (January 2026)

Related: FutureFeed: The Townsville Startup Using AI and Seaweed to Cut Cattle Methane in Australia | Nutromics: The Melbourne Startup Using AI to Monitor What Your Body Actually Needs

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