Authors: Will Grant, Inger Mewburn, Hanna Suominen, Ran Cui, Li’An Chen, Chenchen Xu

Australia’s research workforce has gone through a tough 18 months. Since the Covid-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, we’ve seen significant academic job losses, major changes to teaching practices, and a highly uncertain workforce horizon.

But more data is needed to properly understand these changes.

In this brief update we present data showing the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the research labour market both inside and outside the Australian higher education sector.

By better understanding research labour force trends, we hope that students, educators and key decision makers can better plan for the future, and work towards a better fit between the higher education sector and Australia’s other users of highly skilled researchers.