Transport

How will technology evolve the sector?

Growing urban congestion and the urgent need to improve safety present significant challenges for Australia’s transport sector. Technology-based solutions such as intelligent transport networks are creating demand for skills for the deployment and operation of Internet-of-Things style sensors and control devices, often requiring merged abilities across digital networks and operational technology. These developments will also require systems thinking skills in order to weave the data they generate into efficient solutions .

The transport sector faces another skills challenge with the arrival of autonomous vehicles and mobility-as-a-service offerings. These have the potential to displace a significant numbers of workers, while also driving demand for systems management skills for the design and operation of increasingly complex networks of connected devices and vehicles.

How will the demand for transport and storage workers evolve over the next decade?

The 10 year technology landscape upon which our modelling assumptions are based envisages great leaps forward in autonomous vehicles. We predict an 11.3% reduction in lorry drivers, and an almost 14% reduction in car, taxi and van drivers, under this scenario.

But drivers do not represent the whole of the transport and storage sector workforce. Technological innovation will also leave other workers, such as stock clerks and mail carriers, vulnerable to change. Their roles are characterised by routine and predictable work, that robots can increasingly perform well and cost-effectively.

We see travel attendants, by comparison, as far less vulnerable to automation, thanks to the relatively higher importance of more cognitive, unpredictable functions they perform, including making human connections and thinking creatively. Our analysis suggests a 4% growth in demand for travel attendants and stewards by 2028.

The future of jobs and the skills needed

How widespread are skills shortfalls for new entrants to this sector?

With largescale technological disruption, the makeup of the transport and storage sector workforce will change markedly over the next decade. Many workers will be made redundant, but new positions will also emerge in the sector as the workforce adapts to the new technologies available.

We predict a widespread reskilling effort will be needed to meet that challenge, in particular in critical thinking, speaking and active listening. More than 50% of the available talent pool entering jobs in the sector would require upskilling in these skills.

Looking across the spectrum of skills required in the 2028 transport and storage sector workforce, prospective workers face a steep learning curve in technical skills. Most prominently is programming skills, for which the available talent pool falls 54% short of the required level. By contrast, the most widespread reskilling challenges highlighted in Fig. 2 are typically characterised by a much smaller learning gap.