AI-Adopting Firms Are Hiring 36% More: What That Means for Australian SMEs
New CSIRO research finds Australian firms that adopted AI posted 36% more jobs than non-adopters. The real divide isn't humans versus machines.
New research from CSIRO challenges one of the most common assumptions about AI in the workplace. After tracking the hiring patterns of more than 4,000 Australian firms over three years, researchers found that companies adopting AI advertised 36 per cent more jobs than comparable firms that hadn't adopted. Not fewer roles. More.
For Australian SME owners weighing up whether AI investment means cutting staff later, the local evidence points the other way. The risk isn't being on the side that adopts. It's being on the side that doesn't.
What the CSIRO study actually measured
The study, published in the Australian Journal of Labour Economics by Dr Claire Mason and colleagues at CSIRO, analysed a national dataset of online job advertisements from 2020 to 2023. Researchers identified which firms were AI adopters, based on AI-related signals in their job ads before 2020, and compared their hiring activity over the next three years against non-adopters of similar size, industry and location.
After controlling for those factors, AI-adopting firms posted 36 per cent more non-AI job ads over time. The gap held across industries. These firms weren't shifting hiring towards a small group of AI specialists. They were hiring more broadly, across more roles.
Dr Mason, who leads CSIRO's Workforce and Productivity research team, framed the finding as a divide — but not the one most people expect. "The findings point to a growing gap — not between humans and machines, but between organisations that embrace AI and those that don't."
For an Australian SME, that reframes the decision. Bringing AI into the business isn't only a productivity question. It's also a question of which side of that hiring trajectory the business sits on three years from now.
AI-exposed roles aren't being cut
The study also looked specifically at jobs that AI systems can now perform parts of — accountants, lawyers, analysts, and other knowledge workers. These are the roles people most often worry about.
At AI-adopting firms, demand for these roles didn't fall. At non-adopting firms, demand actually declined slightly but with statistical significance. The implication matters: workers in AI-exposed roles are more competitive when they're at firms using AI, because they can pair their expertise with the tools.
That has a sharp consequence for Australian SMEs employing professional staff. A two-partner accounting firm still doing everything by hand isn't just slower than the one using AI to handle reconciliations and first-pass review. It's becoming a less attractive place to work for the staff it wants to keep.
The same pattern showed up in the skills employers were asking for. Job ads listed more skills over time, with the increase strongest at AI-adopting firms. AI-related skills started appearing in roles you might not expect — sales representatives, security officers, architects. The distinction between an "AI job" and a "normal job" is starting to blur.
Where to start if you haven't yet
Pick one routine task that takes a meaningful slice of weekly time — drafting client proposals, reconciling invoices, summarising meeting notes, first-pass document review. Run a six-week pilot using a single mainstream tool, measure the hours saved, and write down what worked and what didn't. The CSIRO research suggests firms doing this consistently end up hiring more, not less — because saved time gets reinvested in growth, not redundancies.
The revenue gap is real — adoption alone isn't enough
The hiring story is encouraging, but it shouldn't be read as "AI adoption always pays off". A separate PwC survey reported by ACS Information Age found only 14 per cent of Australian CEOs said their organisation had seen revenue gains from AI, well short of the 30 per cent global average. Just 28 per cent of Australian CEOs said they'd invested enough to deliver on their AI goals.
CSIRO's own investment guide notes that up to 80 per cent of AI initiatives fall short of expectations. The hiring lift the CSIRO labour study found is associated with firms that adopted AI deliberately — picked the right projects, built skills around them, and folded AI into how work was actually done. Buying licences for a generative AI tool and hoping for results doesn't produce the same outcome.
That's why CSIRO published its evaluation playbook for AI project prioritisation in July 2025. Australian SMEs don't need the same machinery a large enterprise might apply, but the principle is the same: pick projects where the time saved or quality improvement is measurable, test before scaling, and treat skills development as part of the project, not an afterthought.
What this means for an SME owner today
The most useful finding from the CSIRO research isn't a number. It's a reframe. AI adoption isn't a separate workforce question — it's part of how every role is changing. AI-related skills are showing up in trades, sales, administration, and professional services. The firms positioning themselves on the right side of that change are the ones treating AI as something their existing staff use, not as a replacement for them.
For business owners still watching the AI conversation from the sidelines, the local evidence is becoming hard to ignore. The Australian firms that adopted AI are hiring faster, asking for richer skill sets, and out-competing peers that haven't. The question isn't whether to engage with AI. It's how to do it in a way that strengthens the team rather than disrupting it.