ACS Australia’s Digital Pulse 2017

This year, Australia’s Digital Pulse from ACS examines policies that can support technology-led growth and the digital workforce boom.

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Digital technology is driving some of the biggest changes in our era, and creating significant impacts for consumers, workers, businesses and the broader economy. This digital disruption is bringing big benefits to Australia and the world, including increased living standards, higher workforce growth, improved efficiency for businesses and government agencies, and new opportunities for innovation.

Australia’s Digital Pulse – produced by Deloitte Access Economics for ACS provides an annual snapshot of trends in the Australian digital economy and workforce. This year, the report examines policies that can support technology-led growth and the digital workforce boom.

Technological progress is a fundamental driver of productivity growth and increased living standards in Australia. New economic modelling finds that Australians are each better off by $4,663 per year (in 2016 dollars) as a result of general digital technology uptake, which increases the productivity of workers and businesses, improves the quality of products and services, and reduces prices. This benefit is equivalent to a 6.6% increase in Australia’s gross domestic product (GDP) per capita over the previous decade (Qu et al. 2016).

The contribution of digital technologies to the Australian economy is forecast to be $139 billion by 2020 when it will equate to 7% of Australia’s GDP (DAE 2015a). This represents the size of Australia’s digital economy and illustrates the significant role technologies such as cloud platforms, data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) will play in driving economic growth in Australia.

There has been a boom in the growth of Australia’s information and communications technology (ICT) workforce in recent years, from around 600,000 workers in 2014 to more than 640,000 workers in 2016.1 Strong growth in the ICT workforce is expected to continue, reaching 722,000 workers by 2022. This represents average annual growth of 2.0%, compared to 1.4% for the Australian workforce as a whole.

The ongoing strong demand for ICT workers and skills is consistent with the significant role digital technologies will continue to play in driving Australia’s economic growth. The increasing digitisation of Australian businesses’ operations across all sectors of the economy has resulted in greater integration between ICT functions and broader business operations. For example, 52% of the current ICT workforce is employed outside ICT-related industries, in such areas as professional services, public administration and financial services.