What we do

Skills Australia’s primary function is to provide advice to the Minister on Australia’s current, emerging and future workforce skills needs and workforce development needs. To do this Skills Australia will:

• analyse current and emerging skills needs across industry sectors;
• assess evidence from commissioned research and industry stakeholders to inform Australia’s skills and workforce development needs;
• distribute information from research and consultations with stakeholders widely to enable entrepreneurs, businesses and workers to have the necessary information to inform their training and employment decisions;
• provide Government with recommendations on current and future skills needs to help inform decisions to encourage skills formation and drive ongoing reforms to the education and training sector, including priorities for the investment of public funds; and
• establish and maintain relationships with relevant state bodies to inform advice on current and future demands for skills and facilitate alignment of priorities for responses to skills needs.

Skills Australia has been established with the objective of providing for expert and independent advice in relation to Australia’s workforce skills needs and workforce development needs, in order to:

• identify training priorities to respond to those needs;
• increase workforce participation;
• improve productivity and competitiveness;
• identify and address skills shortages; and
• promote the development of a highly skilled workforce.

• Skills Australia will provide the Australian Government with independent, high quality advice to assist better targeting of support for the skills and workforce development needs of businesses and workers across the country.
• Skills Australia will play a central role in analysing emerging skills needs and demands across industry sectors.  Specifically, Skills Australia will help identify:
• future skills needs, so they can be addressed before they negatively impact on economic activity;
• persistent skills shortages, so that current capacity blockages can be overcome;
• barriers that prevent skills formation in areas where persistent skills shortages exist; and 
• industries where retraining and up skilling of workers may be required to prevent  unemployment, under-employment and skills obsolescence.
• Skills Australia will assist the Government to deliver its commitment to providing an additional 630,000 training places over the next five years. The new places will be delivered in a training system with industry need and advice at its heart, ensuring that training is more responsive to the needs of businesses and individuals.