At a glance
Australia's official list of jobs mentions the data centre technician once, as a job title inside a catch-all category for information and communications technology (ICT) technicians that have no code of their own.
On 17 August 2026 the Australian Bureau of Statistics published the next version of that list and left the entry as it is, while giving AI engineers and site reliability engineers categories of their own.
The Census taken on 11 August 2026 used the same list, so when the job tables come out in October 2027 data centre workers will be inside that catch-all category with everyone else in it.
The NSW parliamentary inquiry into data centres, reporting on 3 November, and the Senate inquiry into AI and data centres, reporting on 16 November, will both work from workforce numbers that trace to one consultancy study the operators commissioned in 2024.
A proposal for a separate category can be lodged with the Bureau now, the earliest it could take effect is March 2029, and six routes exist, three for the industry and three for government.
The official list of jobs mentions data centre workers once
Every job in Australia is counted against one list. The Australian Bureau of Statistics keeps it, it is called the Occupation Standard Classification for Australia, and it gives every occupation its own six-digit number, called an occupation code. When a person writes their job on a Census form, or answers the Bureau's jobs survey, the Bureau matches the words to one of those codes. The codes are what get counted and published. A job with a code of its own gets a number of its own. A job without one is counted inside whichever category the Bureau files it under.
The Bureau published a draft of the next version of the list on 17 August 2026. Comment closes on 18 September, and the new list takes effect in March 2027.
In close to 1,200 occupations, the words "data centre" appear once, as a job title filed under a single occupation code. That code is 314199, which the Bureau calls "ICT and Telecommunications Technicians not elsewhere classified": the category for ICT technicians without a code of their own. The entry lists four such titles: Applications Packager, Data Centre Technician, Information Systems Technician (Defence), and Provisioning Officer. The wording is identical in the version in force now. A person who writes "data centre technician" on a form is therefore counted in the same total as one who writes "applications packager", and the Bureau publishes nothing finer than that total for either of them.
The data centre facilities manager is missing too. The Facilities Manager category names two kinds of specialist, hotel maintenance managers and shopping centre managers, and nothing for a data centre. The phrases "critical environment" and "data centre facilities manager" appear nowhere in the draft.
The Census will count data centre workers as general ICT technicians
Australia's Census ran on the night of 11 August 2026. The Bureau's published timetable puts the Census job tables out in October 2027, classified to the list in force now rather than to the version it publishes in March 2027.
The October 2027 tables will therefore report data centre workers inside 314199, whatever the Bureau decides in the round that closes on 18 September. The same list feeds what the Bureau calls "skilled migration and educational pathways", so a job it has not separated out is absent from those as well.
In October 2024 Mandala Partners put the workforce running Australia's data centres at 9,600 full-time-equivalent jobs. It forecast 17,900 by 2030. AirTrunk, AWS, CDC Data Centres, Microsoft and NEXTDC commissioned the study. The two federally funded Jobs and Skills Councils for ICT and energy, the Future Skills Organisation and the Powering Skills Organisation, gave the NSW inquiry the same number in April 2026. The energy body's August update builds its 13,000 tradespeople figure for data centres from it, using ratios of trades to total staff and of construction to operations workers. Nothing official exists at the same level of detail to set beside it.
Electricians have an occupation code of their own, so their shortfall can be modelled. The Electrical Trades Union told the Australian Financial Review on 2 September that 10 per cent of its electrician members now work on data centres. In the same report the Burning Glass Institute, a labour market research group, modelled the electrician shortfall to a peak of 5,433 in the third quarter of 2028, which it can do because electricians have a code and a workforce series behind it. No equivalent series exists for data centre technicians.
Skills shortage ratings and visa lists use the same job list
Jobs and Skills Australia, the Commonwealth's workforce advisory agency, rates shortages occupation by occupation using the same list, which is how electricians show as short in every state while the data centre technicians beside them are counted only as general ICT technicians. The skilled migration lists are written in occupation codes too, so a job without one cannot be put on them by name.
The two councils told the NSW inquiry in April 2026 that there is no code for a data centre technician, critical environment technician or data centre facilities manager, and no nationally accredited training pathway into data centre operations anywhere in Australia. They asked NSW to petition the Bureau. The draft the Bureau published in August adds 32 new occupations, among them Artificial Intelligence Engineer and Site Reliability Engineer. Singapore's equivalent list, revised in March 2024, has carried a code for data centre engineers since then.
The Bureau asks for a headcount before it adds an occupation
The Bureau publishes the rules it applies. An occupation should have between 300 and 10,000 people doing it, and the Bureau says the list "only includes an occupation for which data can be produced". Anyone proposing a new one has to describe it in full: the usual job title, the tasks, how it differs from neighbouring jobs, the training and licensing it needs, and how many people do it now and will in five years.
Level | Ideal size, employed persons | Example in the draft |
|---|---|---|
Group of related occupations | 5,000 to 30,000 | ICT and telecommunications technicians |
Occupation, with an occupation code | 300 to 10,000 | ICT technicians not elsewhere classified |
Sub-label inside an occupation, no code of its own | At least 50 | Hotel Maintenance Manager, under Facilities Manager |
Source: ABS, The OSCA structure, 6 December 2024; ABS consultation draft, August 2026.
That last requirement is circular for a job like this one: the applicant has to say how many people do it, and the Bureau's own tables cannot say, because the job has no code of its own to count them under. The number has to be assembled outside the official statistics, and the Bureau accepts "industry workforce surveys, workplace awards, job vacancy data, industry workforce planning documents, or job descriptions" as evidence. It judges every proposal "on merit of the content provided regardless of whether the feedback represents whole of organisation or individual views". Mandala's 9,600 covers everyone who works in a data centre, whatever their role, so it does not answer the question for any single occupation.
The Bureau also asks every proposer whether a sub-label inside an existing occupation would do instead. A sub-label needs 50 people. Data Centre Technician is already a named title inside a catch-all category; a sub-label would name it under a defined occupation instead, and would still produce no count of its own. Only an occupation code produces a published number.
Proposals go onto a register between consultation rounds
The round closing on 18 September asks for comment on changes already drafted, though its last question invites comment on "occupations outside of those affected by the update". The Bureau's timetable then runs: next call for new occupations in March 2028, new list published in March 2029. Between rounds the Bureau keeps an "always open" email pathway and says feedback that is not immediately actionable "will be added to a register for later review".
A proposal lodged now sits on that register for the 2028 round, the new occupation would take effect in March 2029, and the first Census that could use it is the next one, due in 2031 under the five-year cycle. Two earlier additions took about two years each. AUSactive, the fitness industry body, says Pilates and Yoga Instructor became occupations in 2024 after "multiple submissions and consultation". Cloud Engineer was published about 22 months after the review that produced it opened.
Other industries also treat the Census itself as evidence. Before Census night, AUSactive told its members which job title to write for each of twelve roles. The Australian Lot Feeders' Association told feedlot staff to write "Feedlot Manager" rather than "Farmer", because its "case to government on workforce shortages, training needs and visa settings is only as strong as the evidence behind it".
Three routes for the industry
The first route is to lodge the case, and the industry body Data Centres Australia has already said publicly that it wants recognition. Its March 2026 submission to the NSW inquiry welcomed "potential recognition of data centre operations as a defined trade pathway". The Future Skills Organisation hosts a form for proposing a new occupation that it says it provides "in collaboration with the ABS", and the Bureau's own pathway takes a proposal directly. The headcount is the missing element. Each operator can supply its own, and the industry body can add them across its members, which is the number the Bureau asks for.
The second route is to get the training recognised first. The Future Skills Organisation is rewriting the national ICT training package now: drafting from July 2026, first draft out for consultation in April 2027, finished in June 2028. Its published scope of five qualifications and 57 skill sets has nothing for data centres. The Powering Skills Organisation lists a full review of the electrical trades training package among its current projects. A data centre operations skill set in either review would give the Bureau the training requirement it asks for and answer the councils' own finding that no accredited pathway exists. The task lists already exist: in AirTrunk's four-year apprenticeship, in the data centre academy TAFE NSW runs with Microsoft at Meadowbank, and in Victoria University's academy, whose graduates are put in front of NEXTDC, CDC and AirTrunk at recruitment days.
The third route is to do both in order: the skill set into the 2026 to 2028 training reviews, and the proposal onto the Bureau's register now, with the headcount added for the March 2028 call. The occupation follows in the 2029 list, and the first count in the 2031 Census. Nothing in that sequence needs a decision from government.
Three routes already open to government
The classification is the Statistician's to set. The Australian Bureau of Statistics Act 1975 makes the Australian Statistician, who heads the Bureau, responsible for statistical standards, and no provision gives a minister, inquiry or department a say in what the list contains. Where a government has wanted a new occupation counted, it has worked with the Bureau, commissioned its own analysis, or published what it already collects. Two of the routes below are federal and the third is a state one.
The first route is partnership with the Bureau, which five Commonwealth agencies used in 2021. For that year's update "the ABS has partnered with five Australian government agencies", covering skills, agriculture, education, industry and defence, which "contributed a combination of operating budget and specialist expertise" to add agriculture, cyber security and naval shipbuilding jobs. The 2022 update added 24 construction trades developed with the education department. The Department of Industry, Science and Resources now administers the government's expectations of data centre developers, the fourth of which asks operators to "invest in developing a skilled domestic workforce, including through apprenticeships and other structured training pathways". Workforce sits among the five expectations that department administers.
The second route produces the headcount rather than the occupation itself. Jobs and Skills Australia's functions in law include preparing "capacity studies, including for emerging and growing industries and occupations". It has published them for clean energy, early childhood education and the food supply chain, and none so far for data centres or AI infrastructure. The minister can direct how the agency does its work, though not what its advice says, so a study can be commissioned without bearing on its findings. A capacity study on data centres would put a workforce number from an official source in front of both November inquiries.
The third route sits with New South Wales, which already collects the underlying estimates. Every large data centre application in the state must "provide an estimate of the retained and new jobs that would be created during the construction and operational phases", with the method behind it. Ninety data centres operate in NSW and fifteen projects endorsed by the state's Investment Delivery Authority are worth A$51.9 billion. The estimates are held application by application rather than published in aggregate. The NSW Data Centre Guidelines of August 2026 ask applicants to "demonstrate support for training of workers" and do not ask for a workforce figure.
What to watch
Comment on the draft list closes on 18 September 2026, and the Bureau says the draft "will be removed from the ABS website" after that. The NSW inquiry reports on 3 November and the Senate inquiry on 16 November, and the workforce figures in the submissions before both are built on the 2024 study. The Census job tables arrive in October 2027 with data centre technicians inside the catch-all category. None of the six routes produces an official count before then, and none produces a separate count before the 2031 Census.