{"id":9961,"date":"2026-06-30T14:00:31","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T14:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.horner.com.au\/?p=9961"},"modified":"2026-07-28T05:16:56","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T05:16:56","slug":"hiring-queensland-2026-labour-market-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.horner.com.au\/hiring-queensland-2026-labour-market-data\/","title":{"rendered":"Hiring Staff in Queensland in 2026: what the latest labour market data means for employers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Queensland has the lowest unemployment rate of any state or territory in Australia. In trend terms it fell to 3.9% in May 2026, down from 4.0% in April and 4.1% a year earlier, against a national rate of 4.4%. For employers hiring in Brisbane, the Gold Coast or regional Queensland, that single figure explains why roles are taking longer to fill than the national headlines suggest.<\/span><\/p>\n

This article covers what the May 2026 data shows, which industries are driving demand, what sits behind the shortage, and what employers can practically do about it.<\/span><\/p>\n

What is Queensland’s unemployment rate in 2026?<\/b><\/h2>\n

Queensland’s trend unemployment rate was 3.9% in May 2026, according to ABS Labour Force<\/a> data released on 25 June 2026. That is the lowest of any state or territory in the country.<\/span><\/p>\n

The ACT sits next at 4.0%, followed by South Australia at 4.1%, New South Wales at 4.3%, Western Australia at 4.4%, the Northern Territory at 4.5%, Victoria at 4.9% and Tasmania at 5.0%. The national rate is 4.4%. In seasonally adjusted terms Queensland is lower again at 3.7%.<\/span><\/p>\n

The direction matters as much as the level. Queensland and South Australia were the only states where unemployment fell over the year, both down 0.2 percentage points. It rose in every other state, most sharply in Tasmania.<\/span><\/p>\n

Employment tells a similar story. In trend terms Queensland added 9,500 jobs in May and 46,400 over the year, growth of 1.5% against a national average of 1.3%. Only New South Wales added more people in raw numbers, at 52,200.<\/span><\/p>\n

Is Queensland’s labour market genuinely tighter, or is it a statistical quirk?<\/b><\/h2>\n

Both, and it is worth being straight about that.<\/span><\/p>\n

Queensland’s participation rate eased to 66.9% in May, down from 67.3% a year earlier, and the employment-to-population ratio slipped to 64.3% from 64.5%. Employment grew, but the population grew faster. Some of that low unemployment rate reflects who is counted as being in the labour force rather than pure heat in hiring.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nationally, underemployment rose in May to 6.3% in seasonally adjusted terms, up 0.4 percentage points. So it would be wrong to say there is no spare capacity anywhere.<\/span><\/p>\n

The honest read is this. Queensland is not a state with no available workers. It is a state where the people employers actually want, meaning skilled, qualified and dependable, are scarce and rarely on the market for long. That is a different problem from a shortage of applicants, and it calls for a different response. Plenty of Queensland employers are receiving applications. Fewer are receiving the right ones.<\/span><\/p>\n

Which Queensland industries are hiring right now?<\/b><\/h2>\n

SEEK’s April 2026 Employment Report<\/a> showed Queensland as one of only three states recording rising annual demand, alongside Western Australia and South Australia. Queensland job ad volumes were up 1.8% year on year at a time when national volumes had fallen 1.9%.<\/span><\/p>\n

The sector detail matters for anyone hiring in operations. Manufacturing, Transport and Logistics job ads in Queensland rose 9.5% over the year. Construction contributed significantly to the state’s annual growth, with Sales up 10.3% and Education and Training up 3.9%.<\/span><\/p>\n

For warehousing, manufacturing and logistics employers, the 9.5% is the number to sit with. Demand in your sector is growing inside the state with the smallest pool of unemployed workers in the country. Those two facts together are what makes Queensland hiring feel harder than the national picture implies.<\/span><\/p>\n

Why is Queensland short of skilled workers?<\/b><\/h2>\n

Two forces are at work, and they compound each other.<\/span><\/p>\n

The first is the scale of the build. Construction Skills Queensland’s Horizon 2032 report, cited by the Queensland Building and Construction Commission, forecasts the state’s construction pipeline growing from around 53 billion dollars in 2024-25 to roughly 77 billion by 2026-27. That is close to a 45% increase in two years. Delivering it needs a peak of about 156,000 construction workers in 2026-27, against an average shortfall of 18,200 workers a year over the next eight years. Population growth, the Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games and the shift to net-zero energy are all drawing on the same workforce at once.<\/span><\/p>\n

The second is who is left to do the work. The QBCC Industry Snapshot puts the average age across Queensland licence classes, excluding fire protection, at almost 49 years. Builder-Open averages 54 and Joinery 53. People under 30 make up just 6% of the state’s 122,000-plus licensees. Experience is retiring faster than it is being replaced, and the knowledge going out the door took decades to build.<\/span><\/p>\n

The training pipeline cannot close that gap quickly. A trade apprenticeship runs three to four years, so the workers needed for the 2026-27 peak are either already in the system or are not arriving in time. This is why the shortage is structural rather than something a better economy resolves.<\/span><\/p>\n

The effect reaches well past construction sites. Major projects need materials moved, warehouses staffed, plant maintained and administration teams keeping it all running. When a state’s build pipeline grows by close to half in two years, it lifts demand across logistics, manufacturing, trades and office support at the same time.<\/span><\/p>\n

Which roles are hardest to fill in Queensland?<\/b><\/h2>\n

Construction Skills Queensland expects carpentry, plumbing, electrical and concreting to lead demand through the peak period.<\/span><\/p>\n

Beyond the trades themselves, the pressure lands on the roles that keep projects and sites moving. Machinery operators, warehouse and store staff, maintenance technicians, supervisors and team leads, and the administration and finance people behind them all become harder to secure when construction absorbs the available workforce.<\/span><\/p>\n

The pattern we see is that the roles hardest to fill are rarely the most senior. They are the dependable middle: the experienced 2IC, the operator with a clean safety record, the coordinator who knows the systems. Those people are almost never actively looking, which is precisely why they are hard to reach through an advert alone.<\/span><\/p>\n

How should employers hire in a market this tight?<\/b><\/h2>\n

The habits that work in a softer market are the ones that cost you here.<\/span><\/p>\n