Detailed STEM-qualified occupations by gender

Australia’s Labour Force Survey reports how many women and men work in occupations each year.

STEM-qualified occupations

Use the interactive data below to compare the number of women and men working in STEM occupations, non-STEM occupations and health occupations over different years.

Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics 2025

How to use the interactive Power BI dashboard

The Power BI dashboards in the monitor present data in different formats, including charts, graphs and tables. You can customise these dashboards based on what you're interested in.

  • Filter the data: Click the options on the left side of each dashboard and make your selections.
  • Find more information about a specific data point: Hover your cursor over the dashboard to reveal more information, such as counts or percentages, if available.
  • Reset the page to its original selections: Click the button labelled ‘Refresh to default view’ in the top left corner of the page.
  • Move between different pages in a dashboard: Click the buttons under ‘Refresh to default view’, if available.

Data insights

The number of women in STEM-qualified occupations increased by around 5,100 (2%) from 2023 to 2024. The number of men grew by around 29,200, also a 2% increase.

From 2021 to 2024, the proportion of women in STEM-qualified occupations has remained at 15%. This was an increase from 11% in 2004. In comparison, since 2004, women have consistently made up about 50% of people in non-STEM occupations and 75% of health occupations.

In the 10 years from 2014 to 2024, the number of women in STEM-qualified occupations rose from approximately 147,000 to 272,200, an increase of 85%. The number of men in STEM-qualified occupations increased by around 25% during this time, from 1,202,400 to 1,506,800.

From 2014 to 2024, the proportion of women increased from 19% to 22% in university STEM-qualified occupations, including:

  • actuaries, mathematicians and statisticians
  • civil engineering professionals
  • computer network professionals
  • environmental scientists
  • medical laboratory scientists.

Over the same period, the proportion of women increased from 18% to 23% in mixed STEM-qualified occupations, such as air transport professionals, ICT managers and science technicians.

Occupations where most of the workforce has Vocational Education and Training (VET) STEM qualifications, like aircraft maintenance engineers, cabinetmakers, electricians and motor mechanics, have shown extremely low gender balance over time. While the number of women in this group has grown by 16,000 (182%) from 2014 to 2024, women still made up only 4% of this group in 2024. This was the highest proportion across the time series since 1987, when it was just 1%.

About the data

We determined the average number of people employed in each occupation per year by:

  • adding together the people employed for each of the four reporting periods in a year
  • dividing by 4
  • rounding the final answer.

This survey reports occupations using the Australian and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations at a 4-digit level. We defined STEM-qualified occupations by identifying occupations where most workers had reported a STEM-related qualification in the 2021 Census of Population and Housing. We then classified occupations by the source of the majority of participants’ qualifications – university, VET or a combination of both (mixed).

View the ABS methodology for the Labour Force Survey.

The data on this page gives a detailed look at numbers of women and men in occupations across years, as it allows users to select one or more specific occupations. For users who would prefer:

Read about our methodology for more information about the variety of STEM workforce data in the STEM Equity Monitor.