This report explores the vast potential of emerging technology to make our future a better one. It argues that if we are prepared, technology could revive our productivity and power a new era of green economic growth, higher living standards, and resilience.
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Adaptive NSW: how embracing tech could recharge our prosperity
Why the report matters
Emerging technologies have the potential to improve productivity, strengthen the economy and lift living standards across NSW.
But to gain the benefits, we need to embrace technology and build a workforce and workplaces that can adapt.
This joint report by the NSW Productivity and Equality Commission and the NSW Innovation and Productivity Council explores how NSW can prepare for these opportunities. It sets out the policy principles needed to ensure tech adoption benefits everyone – workers, businesses and communities.
What’s in the report
This report explains the productivity challenges currently facing New South Wales. It explores how new and emerging technologies could help improve productivity and change how people work and the types of jobs available.
To achieve the best results, government support is essential. The government plays a key role in helping people understand the changes that technology may bring to workplaces and jobs. This includes managing risks, supporting workers through transitions, and making the most of new opportunities created by technology.
The report sets out the core principles for NSW policymakers thinking about technology, automation, and the future of work.
- Be a fast technology adopter – by encouraging private sector tech adoption through smart regulation, while embracing technology to improve public services.
- Attract and foster the core tech-adoption workforce – by nurturing entrepreneurship, harnessing local talent with expertise in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, and making targeted efforts to attract leading-edge overseas tech talent.
- Build all workers’ adaptive capacity – by supporting lifelong learning and continuous upskilling, combatting credentialism and creating smooth mid-career transition pathways, and spreading digital education opportunities, microcredentials, and other forms of non-formal learning.
- Ensure the process of tech adoption and adaptation is inclusive – by ensuring smooth transitions for workers and industries facing technological disruption, using technology to diversify regional economies and broaden workforce participation, and ensuring the benefits of technology are distributed widely.
What the modelling shows
The report presents modelling that shows if NSW embraces emerging technologies at scale:
- productivity growth could lift to 2% a year
- real Gross State Product could grow by 3% a year to 2035
- by 2035, the economy could be 11.8% larger – adding around $11,600 per person or $27,400 per household (in 2021–22 dollars)
- by 2035, government revenues could increase by up to $4.5 billion
unemployment is not expected to rise but some workers will need support - many new jobs will be in services, as well as high-skill, high-wage roles in growing tech industries.