As technology companies continue to lay off staff, Australian research shows the future may be brighter

Australia has a target of delivering 1.2 million critical tech workers by 2030.

However, the sector has been battered by changes and layoffs since the pandemic came to light.

Kate Pounder is the CEO of the Tech Council of Australia, who said the pandemic changed the playbook for many companies across the sector.

“There is some evidence that there was a boom in job creation and company formation during the pandemic.”

The Tech Council of Australia recently revealed an 8 per cent increase in tech jobs last year.

It means Australia’s tech workforce is around 935,000.

“When there’s change in the labour market, you see people using that to start a business,” Ms Pounder said.

Despite the rapid layoffs across many major technology companies, Ms Pounder said for every job lost over the past quarter, 20 have been created.

“We are finding that the ease of people moving into jobs is getting a little better.

“It’s still challenging to find people in Australia, particularly for people in specialised roles,” she said.

There have been over 130,000 layoffs across the technology sector in the last five months

 
The technology sector was billed as the most exciting industry to work in.

Big offices, big dreams, big money were all part of the parcel for many companies attracting staff.

As many organisations caught onto the momentum of the pandemic, the same energy has not been particularly met on the other side.

Thousands of workers have since been laid off as the good times stopped rolling.

In fact, the technology sector’s layoffs are the highest since the dotcom bubble burst 22 years ago.

The BT Group is one of the latest companies cutting staff.

Fifty-five thousand have lost their jobs as part of a corporate restructure.

CEO Philip Jansen will freeze his £1.1 million salary until he retires, according to reports from Sky News.

The ground is also shifting as artificial intelligence takes hold and the economy worsens.

BT Group said it is laying off 11,000 staff because of the increased capacity for artificial intelligence in the workplace.

At the same time, companies like Apple and Goldman Sachs are among those restricting or banning the use of tools like ChatGPT amid privacy or data concerns.

Apple and Samsung are among companies restricting or banning the use of ChatGPT

 
Some of the world’s largest technology companies, including Apple and Amazon have banned or restricted OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

The tool relies on artificial intelligence to produce responses to prompts entered by users.

However, major brands remain concerned around the privacy risks because of the data ChatGPT uses to improve its accuracy.

Samsung has previously reported employees unintentionally leaking confidential internal source code and meeting recordings through ChatGPT.

Meanwhile, Apple has banned the web-platform over concerns surrounding data leaks.