Workforce planning is essential to understanding the challenges and opportunities shaping workforce development across the industries we support.
Workforce planning helps build a shared vision of workforce priorities and identifies strategies to address key challenges and skill needs.
By combining statistical data with insights from industry, it supports informed decision-making and highlights where action is needed to strengthen workforce capability.
This work guides Skills Insight’s priorities and project submissions, while also providing industry bodies, employers and other stakeholders with evidence to inform their own workforce planning, training strategies and investment in skills.
Workforce planning is an ongoing process that explores and integrates data from the following areas:
These insights are tested with industry leaders and the Stakeholder Forum to identify and confirm strategic workforce planning priorities.
A Workforce Plan is produced annually as part of the workforce planning process. Each annual edition builds on the last, considering the latest stakeholder feedback and newly released data.
Previous Workforce Plans
Four strategic workforce planning priorities have been identified for 2025-26, and they reflect a shared view that addressing systemic workforce constraints and growing future capabilities requires coordinated responses that elevate:
Leadership
Support industry leadership to understand, facilitate and promote VET solutions
Skills
Identify current and future workforce skills needs and develop improved VET products
Accessibility
Encourage improved quality and supply of training delivery where, when and for whom it is needed
Data and evidence
Promote data improvements and evidence-based solutions to address skilling and employment barriers
Industry data and insights highlight persistent, systemic workforce challenges – particularly in attraction and retention, and enabling education and training. While opportunities exist, piecemeal efforts have proven inadequate. What is needed now is a shared workforce vision, tripartite collaboration, and bold policies that are shaped by data and evidence.
For such a vision to gain traction, it must cut through complexity with a compelling and clearly articulated value proposition. Any new vision with the ambition of being adopted across stakeholder groups, both to complement and supersede existing visions, therefore needs to clearly articulate the ‘why’ to build buy-in – the value proposition needs to be defined.
The Workforce Plan 2025-2026 presents case studies of best practice in workforce attraction and retention and enabling education and training. With tripartite leadership, more accessible and high-quality education and training can be the vital ingredient in supporting a virtuous circle, in which skilling at all levels can lift industry productivity and profitability, increase capacity for professionalisation and process improvement, and support the attraction and retention of a diverse workforce. All parts of this virtuous circle are inter-dependent, and strengthening one part will naturally strengthen the others.
Thirteen industry pages
Industry-specific webpages are in development and will be available in the coming months. They will feature data for each industry, including skills and workforce trends, challenges and opportunities, along with links to some relevant resources.
In the meantime, industry data can be explored through the data dashboard, with further insights available in the Workforce Plan 2025-2026.
Workforce attraction and retention, and enabling education and training
The availability of jobs is not in itself enough to attract, retain and re-attract sufficient people to the agribusiness, fibre, furnishing, food, animal and environment care workforces, or to ensure education and training opportunities are available locally to develop the capabilities of new and existing workers, whether for current or emerging skills.
All industries that Skills Insight supports are experiencing occupation and skills shortages , exacerbated by an insufficient supply of vocational education and training (VET) to support efforts to develop a capable workforce where and when it is needed. This increases operational pressures on industry enterprises, many of which are small businesses with little time or capacity to facilitate – or even signal demand for – the formal training that may enable better productivity and quality business outcomes. To grow Australia’s future workforce the status quo is not an option. Improvements to the education system, including VET, are critical for uplifting our nation’s skills and the quality of labour supply.
Dedicated webpages with further insights into workforce attraction and retention, and enabling education and training are under development. An in-depth analysis on these topics can be read in the Workforce Plan 2025-2026.
Data Dashboard
The Skills Insight Data Dashboard brings together workforce, occupation, and training data to provide an overview of 13 industry groups. It highlights demographics, employment trends, top employing occupations, and VET activity.
Use this Data Dashboard to explore data and insights relevant to the industries you’re interested in.
Further information on how this data links to real-world experiences and stakeholder insights is detailed in our Workforce Plan 2025–2026.