Executive Job Demand in Australia Treads Water Amid Global Uncertainty
Corporate Australia eyes Federal Government’s stance on taxation, immigration, and public sector hiring, as executive roles in the public sector surge.
Information Technology – Will AI Give Birth to a New Generation of Executive Jobs?
Executive job demand in Australia remained largely flat in June, as medium-term economic and political uncertainties merged with the longer-term implications of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) super-cycle to suppress hiring momentum.
The E.L Executive Demand Index rose by a modest 1 percent in June but remains down approximately 10 percent compared to this time last year.
This decline follows a significant post-COVID hiring surge, which has since been unwound.
E.L Executive Demand Index Holds Steady in June
Grant Montgomery, Managing Director of E.L Consult—a leading executive search firm that has published E.L Executive Demand Index for over 30 years—commented:
“The E.L Index remained steady in June, moving just 1 percent overall. This suggests that executive demand is still bumping along the bottom of its trading range for the past financial year, now 10 percent lower than in mid-2024. It reflects a year marked by profound uncertainty: a looming federal election, a newly interventionist U.S. President, escalating conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, volatile financial markets, and ongoing interest rate unpredictability.”
The Post-COVID Leadership Bubble and Executive Redundancies
Montgomery pointed to broader psychological and financial shifts in the business sector over the past five years:
“The COVID-era panic brought in thousands of executive-level managers at both state and federal levels. In response, the private sector scaled up its leadership ranks, only to later realise that cash flows could not sustain such expenditure. The result was a wave of executive redundancies.”
Public Sector Stability vs. Private Sector Uncertainty
“Interestingly, the public sector’s executive stability has lent some predictability to the overall Index, whereas the business sector remains dogged by uncertainty, but not so with the public sector, now shockingly, around one in five Australian workers—2.5 million people—are now employed by the public sector. The total wages bill grew by 8% from 2023 to 2024.
“While specific executive-level statistics are lacking, it’s likely public sector executive demand has kept pace, suggesting that thousands of high-paid officials are now working to justify newly created roles.”
“Notably, the number of public servants employed in ‘Public Administration and Safety’ rose by 32,000 in 2023–24—a significant managerial expansion.
“Hiring managers just to manage—without delivering real output—is precisely what the private sector has been moving away from over the past decade.
“Despite government rhetoric about prioritising productivity, this kind of hiring only serves to drag down efficiency, especially as the private sector faces increased regulatory oversight. The nanny state becoming the strong-arm state?”
AI and the Future of White-Collar Work
In sectoral trends, some movement was seen in accounting, a typical year-end trend.
However, the standout shift was a sharp 22% drop in demand for IT professionals.
Montgomery noted:
“Information and communication technology is a volatile field, so large swings aren’t unusual,”
“Still, such a significant decline—when most other indexes were flat or modestly positive—could be the canary in the coal mine, hinting at declining business confidence.”
He added:
“AI offers substantial opportunity, but it also brings disruptive change. This isn’t like the calculator or the PC. This is a fundamental shift in how we think about work.
White-collar IT professionals will need to walk a fine line: deploying AI effectively without automating themselves out of a job, as routine supervisory tasks are increasingly absorbed by intelligent systems.”
Broader geopolitical issues and economic uncertainty remain persistent headwinds:
“Australia, like many countries, is holding back on major management or capital investments, waiting for a clearer picture of where global politics and trade are headed— particularly in the Middle East, Europe, and Asia.”
State and Sector Performance
State-level performance was mixed. Western Australia, Queensland, and Victoria experienced declines, while New South Wales posted a 7% increase, led by gains in Financial Services, Engineering, and Marketing roles.
Among industry sectors, Marketing was the standout, buoyed by strong demand in New South Wales and supported by gains across other states. Finance followed, driven by incremental increases in NSW and larger improvements in the ACT and Northern Territory.
In contrast, Information Technology experienced a substantial decline, continuing its recent volatility.
Call Grant Montgomery on +612 9221 6688 or 0414926688 for further details
June 2025 Statistics
June 2025 National Index
June 2025 National Index: 481
Same period last year (June 2024): 533
Percentage change over last month: 1%
National Summary
State and territory performances were mixed, with Western Australia, Queensland and Victoria lower,
while New South Wales was 7 per cent higher thanks to improvements in Financial, Engineering and Marketing employment.
National Demand for Executives Over Last Seven Years
State and territory performances were mixed, with Western Australia, Queensland and Victoria lower, while New South Wales was 7 per cent higher thanks to improvements in Financial, Engineering and Marketing employment.
State by State Comparison
State and territory performances were mixed, with Western Australia, Queensland and Victoria lower, while New South Wales was 7 per cent higher thanks to improvements in Financial, Engineering and Marketing employment.
Executive Groups
Among the sectors, the Marketing index was the strongest, largely due to a significant gain in NSW. Finance was second, due to a small increase in NSW and more extensive gains in the ACT and the Northern Territory. Information Technology registered a significant loss, continuing its volatile path of recent months.
June 2025 E.L Finance Index
June 2025 E.L Finance Index: 801
Same period last year (June 2024): 818
Percentage change over last month: 4%
The Financial index rose another 4 per cent in June and is showing some indications of a change in its longer-term trend.
The EL Index has been showing definite signs of negativity, but the last two months’ performances have steadied the ship and the rate of decline has slowed.
However, the only people that truly know the situation of a company at the end of a financial year are the Financial executives, so the sector may have dragged some of its employment into the old financial year because they knew the budgets for the new year would not accommodate their hiring intentions.
June 2025 E.L Engineering Index
June 2025 E.L Engineering Index: 229
Same period last year (June 2024): 272
Percentage change over last month: 2%
Engineering managed to keep its head above water in June, registering a 2 per cent gain.
This strength could be associated with old projects taking longer than expected to be completed, requiring the employment of more executives to deal with the overruns and geographic issues that can become emergencies needing to be addressed.
The gains were relatively broad across the country, with New South Wales the strongest large state, while South Australia performed well among the smaller players.
June 2025 E.L Management Index
June 2025 E.L Management Index: 641
Same period last year (June 2024): 769
Percentage change over last month: -3%
The Management sector recorded a 6 per cent loss in June, exactly turning around the improvement experienced in May.
Losses were felt across the country in all business and government online and offline advertising markets, particularly in the ACT, South Australia and Western Australia.
The Management index is now one of the poorer-performing sectors, but was also one of the largest recipients of Covid-era largesse as both the government and business sectors emotionally reacted for the need for the pandemic to be handled.
After gains in the latter half of 2024 the Management index has undergone a considerable slide and continues to drag lower.
June 2025 E.L Information Technology Index
June 2025 E.L Information Technology Index: 137
Same period last year (June 2024): 226
Percentage change over last month: -22%
Information Technology was clearly the weakest sector in June, losing 22 per cent after the 30 per cent pick-up the prior month.
Also, in contrast to the prior month, it was the business sector that undermined the index’s results, with the government sector demand holding up. The longer-term trend has resumed its downward focus.
The jury remains out on the results of the implementation of the AI era for IT executives. Although there will undoubtedly be opportunities for flexible players, AI’s takeover of coding activity and other previously human endeavours may mean that general executives, rather than subject matter executive-level experts, will be required to implement the changes.
June 2025 E.L Marketing Index
June 2025 E.L Marketing Index: 537
Same period last year (June 2024): 496
Percentage change over last month: 10%
Marketing was the stand-out achiever of the June index, rising 10 per cent and cancelling out the relatively infrequent loss that was experienced in the prior month.
Marketing is the only index to be higher than at the start of 2024, with the government sector making up a significant portion of the positive impetus. In June, for example, government sector demand was higher percentage than the business sector. Demand was negative or flat in static media.
Performance was mixed across the country – Victoria and Western Australia were lower, while New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia’s efforts were enough to produce the index-topping result.
About the E.L Index
The E.L Index is a comprehensive monthly analysis of employment trends at executive level. An Australian analysis is produced in Sydney and an Asian analysis in Hong Kong and Singapore.
The E.L Index has shown by two separate University studies to correlate strongly with general economic and business trends. It is featured by most of the major news services and is closely followed by government and central bank analysts.
The E.L Index is actually a combined national index of all executive demand made up of five separate indices; E.L Finance Index, E.L IT Index, E.L Management Index, E.L Marketing Index and the E.L Engineering Index.
The National and specific career group Indexes are shown as relative indexes recording the monthly demand activity for executive positions in the current month against the demand in a historical base period which is normalised to 100. The historical base period used was the average of the last quarter of 1992 which research showed to be the bottom of that downturn.
By averaging to a historical base period the comparison of, say, June 1994 to June 2000 is meaningful, giving a clean, easily understood appreciation of changing investment and economic trends without seasonal obscurity.
The E.L Index utilises data from both print and internet sources and is the only employment index to do so.
The print data is collected from the major employment paper in each state. National papers are not used to avoid “doubling up”. Internet data is not collected off the web sites which can be subject to some error but instead collected through raw data provided by the ISP themselves. Print data has over 15 years of historical data and the internet more than 6 years.
Why Executive Demand is a Primary Lead Indicator?
It is often claimed that unemployment figures and broad-based job vacancy surveys do not give a fair impression of what is occurring in executive ranks. The E.L Index addresses this and has some interesting correlative and predictive qualities. Such as:
- Employment of management usually precedes the employment of skilled and unskilled workers.
- Employment of engineering executives precedes major capital investment.
- The division between various management sectors gives an indication of which sectors of the economy are experiencing growth or decline.
- Compares month by month changes in the public and private sector as well as monitoring government expenditure patterns.
- Makes regional comparisons after allowing for population differences.
- It shows a ‘rate of change’ and can therefore be realistically compared to general economic and employment growth unlike some surveys that report absolute numbers.
- Core data is collected on an actual expenditure of business and government, not on a respondent’s opinion or confidence level.
