The silence in Australian job ads

All editions

We measured 28,124 live Australian job ads, read daily from 380 employer hiring systems. The finding of this first edition is not what the ads say. It is how much they refuse to say, to exactly the people with the least room for a wasted application.

All figures counted 23 Aug 2026. Frozen for citation.

91% of ads state no pay

Of 28,124 live ads, 2,619 state any pay figure. 91% state none. Australian law does not require pay in a job ad, only that an advertised rate is not below the legal minimum, and employers overwhelmingly take the option to stay silent.

Casual ads are the most silent of all: 97%

Of 1,851 live ads marked casual, 53 state a pay figure. 97% say nothing. Casual workers are the workers most likely to be paid at or near the award floor, and the least likely to be told a number before they apply.

95% of ads state no work-rights position

653 live ads state citizens only. 666 require full existing work rights. The remaining 26,805 live ads, 95% of the total, say nothing about work rights at all. For a visa holder, silence means applying blind.

22 casual ads, out of 1,851, welcome beginners

Of 1,851 live casual ads, 22 (1.2%) say no experience is needed or that training is provided. 68 (3.7%) ask for years of experience. The rest do not address experience either way. Casual work is the classic first job; almost no ad says so.

1 in 14 graduate ads asks for years of experience

Of 416 live ads flagged as graduate roles, 30 (7.2%) ask for years of experience in the description. The entry-level-with-experience ad is real, but it is the exception, not the rule.

Christmas hiring is already live in August

43 live ads already carry Christmas in the title, in the third week of August. The seasonal window opens months before the season, which is exactly when applicants are not yet looking.

Where casual Australia is hiring

Method and limits

Counts cover live ads in our engine on the count date, read from 380 employer hiring systems; they are not a census of every ad in Australia. Pay stated means the ad carries a salary figure in its structured data. Work-rights and experience findings come from text analysis of ad descriptions, with negated phrases (such as "no experience required") excluded from demand counts. Definitions stay fixed between editions so months compare.

The data behind this edition: download the CSV (CC BY 4.0). Source: the Chanse Entry-Level Index — chanse.com.au/insights.