More than half of permanent workers in Australia (54%) are open to making the switch to contracting in 2025, while 66% of those open to contracting are currently actively looking for a contract role. This is according to a survey by Talent International.

The survey polled over 800 permanent workers. It also found that the makeup of Australia’s workforce is shifting, with 7.5% of Australians working as independent contractors.

It comes as the study found contract rates have mainly decreased, as companies move away from contract hiring and are prioritising full-time and permanent.

According to Talent data of over 1,900 workers, when asked for their preference in working models, a majority of 49% stated they preferred fully remote work, closely followed by 45% who preferred a hybrid model.

With learning and development opportunities coming in many forms for different businesses, Talent survey data showed that conferences & workshops are highly valued (37%), followed by in-house training programmes (28%). Online learning subscriptions came in third at 20%, lastly followed by tuition reimbursement at only 15%.

Meanwhile, cyber security and data experts remain high in demand across Australia and New Zealand, with salaries continuing to sneak upwards, but there have been no significant increases across the board.

Demand remains high for the following skills: artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, data analysis, cloud architecture and Microsoft systems.

 “The IT hiring market for 2025 will improve on 2024, which slumped mid-year and has been increasing since then,” Simon Yeung, Talent managing director in Victoria, said in a press release. “Many enterprise and mid-large organisations will pursue programs to achieve a data governance maturity uplift, as high-quality high-volume data is increasingly a competitive advantage. Cybersecurity challenges will increase as organisations face increased attacks that are partly AI-driven, while they balance increased demand for IT resources for AI and data.”