Australia’s FMCG workforce challenge is becoming structural
Australia’s food and grocery manufacturing sector employs nearly 300,000 people and plays a critical role in the nation’s food supply chains and productive capacity. Yet the sector operates within an historically tight labour market, with persistent shortages concentrated in many of the operational, technical and trade-related roles on which manufacturers depend.
Research undertaken by Oxford Economics Australia for the Australian Food and Grocery Council examined the outlook for five critical occupations: packers, food and drink factory workers, forklift drivers, purchasing and supply logistics clerks, and manufacturing production managers.
The analysis found that demand is projected to exceed workforce supply in all five occupations by 2035.
However, the most important finding is not the aggregate number. It is that the underlying cause of workforce pressure differs substantially between occupations.
For packers, retention is the central challenge. The occupation attracts significant numbers of new workers through education and migration, but these inflows are more than offset by workers moving into other occupations and industries. Increasing training places alone will therefore be insufficient: employers must also consider job quality, shift design, supervision, working conditions and opportunities for career progression.
Forklift drivers face a different problem. Around 60% of the current workforce is expected to leave through retirement and other natural attrition by 2035. Food and drink factory workers are also exposed to an ageing workforce, with more than 40% of today’s workers expected to leave over the same period. These pressures are largely embedded in the existing age profile, making early recruitment, succession planning, knowledge transfer and the retention of experienced workers increasingly important.
For manufacturing production managers, workforce supply is expected to grow—but not quickly enough to meet rising demand. Purchasing and supply logistics clerks face a combination of growing demand and workforce outflows. These occupations illustrate how technological change does not simply reduce labour requirements: it can also increase demand for people capable of managing production systems, coordinating complex supply chains and integrating new technologies into operations.
The implications are clear: there is no single solution to the sector’s workforce challenge.
Individual businesses will experience these pressures differently depending on their workforce, production processes and location. The common priority is to plan workforce capacity as deliberately as production capacity: identify the occupations that could constrain growth, diagnose whether the pressure arises from ageing, retention, entry pathways or demand, and intervene before shortages translate into lost production, increased operational risk or delayed investment.
Australia’s FMCG workforce pressures are significant, but they are manageable if industry and government respond to the particular causes affecting each occupation. Treating the challenge simply as a general shortage of workers risks investing in solutions that do not address the underlying constraint.
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