Australia still has stubborn shortages in nursing, trades, teaching, aged care, plus a narrower band of cyber and engineering roles. You already knew the job titles. What actually decides whether you get hired is which board you search and whether the ad accepts your visa.
So where do you apply? SEEK, Indeed, LinkedIn, and employer ATS portals carry almost all of the real vacancies. Shortage PDFs carry none.
Jobs and Skills Australia publishes the Occupation Shortage List, the one employers and migration agents watch. Third-party summaries of the 2025 assessment put about 29% of roughly 1,022 occupations in national shortage, with technicians and trades among the hardest-hit groups. That list is a signal. It is not an interview.
High-demand roles worth searching first
If you only have time for a handful of saved alerts, point them at the titles that keep appearing in shortage commentary and on skilled occupation lists. This isn't a ranked chart. Vendor blogs disagree on the order, and JSA scores occupations rather than publishing a public top 10.
| Role | Why it stays hard to fill | What to type on a job board |
|---|---|---|
| Registered nurse, aged care nurse | Care demand stays high; Skill Level 3-style roles keep getting flagged as tough to staff | registered nurse, aged care, regional, sponsorship |
| Electrician, carpenter, fitter | Trades show a high shortage share in those JSA-style write-ups | electrician, carpenter, fitter, full time, your state |
| Early childhood or STEM teacher | Regional schools and centres keep posting | teacher, early childhood, secondary maths, rural |
| Cybersecurity specialist | Tech hiring is selective, but cyber codes still appear on skilled and Core Skills lists | cybersecurity, GRC, security engineer |
| Electrical or renewable engineer | Energy projects plus professional engineering codes on the skilled lists | electrical engineer, renewable, power |
| Aged care or support worker | High volume, lower barrier, often regional | aged care, personal care, Certificate III |
Search the live ad, not last year's roundup. An occupation can sit in shortage nationally and still have zero suitable posts in your city this week.
Where Australian vacancies actually sit
SEEK remains the default board for local hiring. Indeed hosts and scrapes a large slice of the same market. LinkedIn pulls ahead for professional, cyber, and sponsored roles. Public employment-service listings then catch the government-funded and entry-level jobs that never trend anywhere.
Turns out plenty of "shortage" posts are closed to you on the first line. "Must have full working rights" shows up far more than "visa sponsorship available."
Set alerts the day you pick a title.
- SEEK and Indeed: same job title, then a metro search and a regional search, saved separately
- LinkedIn: better for cyber, data, and engineering; weaker for licensed trades
- Specialist paths: health recruiters, apprenticeship portals, FIFO mining boards, hospital career sites
- Employer ATS: PageUp, Workday, and similar systems sit behind many SEEK cards
When a listing exists on both the board and the employer's career site, apply in both places. Just don't spin up duplicate ATS profiles for the sake of it. That wastes time. One clean file with the right licence names beats three rushed ones.
Read the visa sentence before you rewrite your resume. If the employer won't sponsor, no keyword trick fixes that.
What pay looks like before you open SEEK
Role-level screenshots go stale. Use the ABS employee earnings release as the benchmark, then treat each ad as a separate offer.
Here are the August 2025 numbers. Median employee earnings in a main job were $1,425 a week, up $26 or 1.9% on a year earlier. That figure covers all employees, not only full-time professionals. Sydney, Brisbane, and Perth had the highest capital-city medians at $1,500 a week. Melbourne and Hobart came in around $1,400. Regional Western Australia matched them at $1,400. Regional South Australia was lower, at $1,200.
Managers led the occupation groups at a $2,072 weekly median. Professionals were next. Trades often look close to professional pay once overtime, allowances, and FIFO loadings get counted, which job cards like to hide under "plus benefits."
Don't annualize a casual rate and call it a salary. Split base, super, penalty rates, and relocation in your notes. Super is not take-home pay.
Metro ads versus regional shortages
Fill rates run tighter outside the capitals. That's why regional nominations and 491-style visas keep appearing in migration explainers. The pay doesn't automatically follow, though. Some regional nursing and trade posts add relocation or retention money. Others just have fewer applicants and a long drive.
Regional South Australia's lower median is the reminder. A shortage is not a raise.
Try it yourself. Filter SEEK to regional NSW, QLD, WA, and NT, then run the same title in Sydney. Same role, regional filters. You'll see why sponsorship language often lives only on the regional copy of the ad, while the metro copy of that same title says working rights required.
How visas change what you can click
Thing is, occupation lists decide whether a points-tested visa is even on the table. Home Affairs still runs several of them: a medium and long-term list for independent 189-style pathways, short-term and regional lists for nominated visas, and the Core Skills Occupation List introduced in December 2024 for the Skills in Demand (482) stream and some 186 direct-entry cases. Vendor tables can't agree on exact occupation counts. Check the current instrument, not a colourful blog graphic.
The subclasses, quickly. 189 is points-tested and independent. 190 needs state nomination, and 491 is the regional version. Then there's 482, employer-sponsored and often the fastest way into a paid job, plus 186, the employer permanent route once you're already working.
Job boards don't verify your ANZSCO code. You do. Skills assessment comes before a serious expression of interest. Teachers face AITSL-style checks. Nurses need registration. Trades need trade recognition. That paperwork is exactly why a "priority" title can sit in your drafts for months while a local applicant with the same ticket starts Monday.
Search, tailor, apply
- Confirm your occupation and assessing authority against the current skilled lists, not a screenshot from last year.
- Build two SEEK searches for the same title: one metro, one regional, with and without the word sponsorship.
- Mirror those searches on Indeed and LinkedIn and turn on daily alerts.
- Put licence, AHPRA, White Card, WWCC, or ticket names in the top third of your resume so the ATS can parse them.
- Apply on the board, then on the employer ATS if the listing links out.
- Track board, date, visa wording, and recruiter name in a simple sheet.
Offshore? Run the visa work in parallel, not after. Waiting for an interview before you start a skills assessment burns a whole hiring cycle.
The documents you'll actually be asked for are predictable: a resume that matches the ad's licence wording, proof of registration or trade recognition, a skills assessment if you're using a skilled visa, and right-to-work evidence. Care and teaching roles often add a WWCC. Mining and construction add tickets. Cyber roles may want a police check. Have those PDFs named cleanly before you hit Easy Apply.
Trades hiring versus tech hiring
| Licensed trades | Cyber, data, engineering | |
|---|---|---|
| How ads appear | High volume on SEEK, many regional and FIFO | Selective; LinkedIn and company ATS matter more |
| Typical entry | Apprenticeship, ticket, licence | Degree plus a few years, or a narrow cert |
| What the ATS wants | Licence numbers, White Card, trade recognition | Stack names, clearance, years in the title |
| Visa friction | Regional and employer-sponsored paths show up often | Points-tested or 482 if the code sits on the right list |
Trades hiring stays location-heavy and hands-on. Tech hiring screens portfolios, years, sometimes clearances. Pick the board that matches how that industry actually hires. The nicest mobile app on the market is irrelevant if electricians never open it.
What the listings will not tell you
To be honest, a lot of in-demand copy is recycled by migration marketers who need you to lodge an EOI, and the same titles that look golden on a shortage PDF can sit for weeks on SEEK because the roster is nights, the town is remote, or the employer will not sponsor, and you only catch any of this after you've read twenty ads in a row and noticed the working-rights line is identical on every single one of them.
Software posts mention AI more than they used to. Entry-level data jobs are still gated by experience. Filter by date posted. Anything older than two weeks is probably stale, unless it's a hospital or government standing campaign.
Open SEEK tonight. Run one shortage title in your state, then the same title as a regional search. Save both alerts. Read the visa line on the first ten ads before you touch your resume.