Snowflake Research Reveals AI-Driven Job Creation Outpaces Job Loss across Australia and New Zealand, with 74% Reporting Workforce Gains

•    AI's workforce impact is more nuanced than headlines suggest, with 74% of A/NZ organisations reporting AI-driven job creation compared to 50% reporting job losses
•    A/NZ workers were most likely to use Gen AI tools without company approval with 67% reporting use of non-approved tools, suggesting pent-up demand 
•    A/NZ organisations, more than any other region, struggled with data quality as 55% of local respondents reported this as a challenge when curating data for AI systems

SYDNEY, Australia - March 13, 2026 - Snowflake (NYSE: SNOW), the AI Data Cloud company, in collaboration with Omdia by Informa TechTarget, today released "The ROI of Gen AI and Agents", a global research report surveying 2,050 business and technology leaders across 10 different countries, all of whom influence their organisation's current and future AI purchases. The findings reveal that AI's impact on A/NZ's workforce is more nuanced than headlines suggest, with 74% of local organisations experiencing increased hiring compared to 50% experiencing role reductions - signalling that as adoption accelerates, AI is driving overall job growth rather than consolidation.

"We are starting to see the impacts of AI across organisations in the region, and while job losses are always hard to come to terms with, the amount of jobs created across the region is a welcome surprise and something that should hopefully help to quell some of the fears emerging around AI," said Glenn McPherson, Regional Vice President, Australia, Snowflake. "What the data also reveal is that people want to use it, and they're willing to use the tools that make sense to their roles. The fears around AI are seemingly outweighed by the benefits it's providing to organisations and individuals, though the region has a lot it can do to keep up with the rest of the world." 

AI Drives A/NZ Job Loss and Creation, with a Net Positive Impact on Technical Roles

As organisations scale AI across the enterprise, its impact on the workforce is becoming clearer. While AI is driving both job growth and role reductions, the overall trend is positive. 

Among A/NZ respondents, 41% say AI has created jobs across their organisations while 17% say it has eliminated roles (this was the equal highest reported job loss, tied with the UK).  Additionally, 33% report a mix of both job creation and loss — netting to 74% reporting job creation versus 50% reporting job loss.

When asked at which level of seniority organisations across the globe were seeing job losses, the most were seen at the entry level (63%) and among middle management (46%).

Shadow AI usage highest in A/NZ as GenAI maturity lags leaders

Respondents in A/NZ were the most likely to have used nonapproved AI tools for work (67% versus 57% globally). The drivers behind this shift towards shadow AI are:

• Approval to use new tools takes too long / frequently rejected (49%)
• Approved tools lacked specific capabilities I needed (48%)
• Nonapproved tools help get my job done faster (36%)
• I was unaware of the policy against using these tools (27%)

These suggest a pent-up demand for approved AI for local organisations, though one key handbrake for AI across the region may be organisations' perception of ROI. While GenAI adoption rates mirror the broader market, those in A/NZ were less likely to report seeing positive impacts from GenAI. 

Respondents in A/NZ lagged in:

• Increased operational efficiency (83% versus 88% globally)
• Talent management outcomes (65% versus 74%)
• Risk management (69% versus 78%)

One key area where the usage of gen AI differs between ANZ and the rest of the globe is in ITOps:

• 54% of respondents within ANZ say their IT departments are using gen AI today, versus 63% globally.
• Further, 48% said within the IT team, gen AI is helping with log analysis and anomaly detection, a significantly lower percentage than was reported globally (58%).

This is despite the region ranking relatively high when it comes to having their unstructured data AI-ready; among the 10 regions surveyed, India leads with 14% reporting that the majority of their unstructured data is AI-ready, followed by A/NZ at 12%, and Canada at 10%. A/NZ ranks ahead of the United States (8%) and is ahead of the global average (7%).

Globally, AI Delivers Real Returns and Rewires Operations

While some widely cited studies1 claim that AI pilots fail to deliver value, this research tells a different story. As AI moves from pilot programs into production, organisations are seeing measurable value. Among early AI adopters, 92% report positive ROI, and businesses plan to allocate 22% (23% in A/NZ) of their technology budgets to AI in the coming year. This signals that investment is accelerating, not slowing, and that organisations are leaning into AI as a proven driver of measurable business impact, rather than treating it as a speculative experiment. 

According to the respondents, AI is already embedded in core enterprise functions:

• 62% of IT operations teams report active AI use
• 59% of data analytics teams report active AI use
• 53% of cybersecurity teams report active AI use
• 50% of software development teams report active AI use

By contrast, functions such as procurement, sales, and marketing are the slowest to adopt AI, with around 30% of each reporting active use. At the industry level, advertising and media leads, with 42% of organisations reporting AI in production today, followed by healthcare and life sciences at 34%, and both manufacturing and technology at 32%. 

Additionally, nearly half of all code, approximately 48%, is reported to be AI-generated, highlighting how deeply the technology is embedded in day-to-day workflows. Organisations are also seeing measurable benefits from AI coding tools and apps, with 82% reporting improvements in code testing, bug detection, and resolution, and 80% citing gains in overall code quality. As AI-generated code becomes embedded in everyday workflows, enterprises will increasingly look towards coding agents that operate on trusted enterprise data, capabilities Snowflake is advancing through Cortex Code, Snowflake's AI coding agent. 

"The data shows that AI is delivering tangible returns, but scaling it successfully requires a strong data foundation and governance framework", said Adam DeMattia, Senior Director of Research, Omdia by Informa TechTarget. "Organisations that can unify their data, improve quality, and operationalise AI responsibly will be best positioned to sustain ROI and workforce gains. With its focus on secure, governed data and AI integration at scale, Snowflake is well positioned to help enterprises move from experimentation to enterprise-wide impact."

Learn More: 

• Read the full research report, "The ROI of Gen AI and Agents," and double click into the findings in this blog post.
• Stay on top of the latest news and announcements from Snowflake on LinkedIn and X.

1MIT Nanda (July 2025) "The GenAI Divide: The State of AI in Business 2025." Available at the following link. MIT Nanda.

Methodology
The ROI of Gen AI and Agents is based on responses from 2,050 respondents from 10 countries (Australia/New Zealand, Canada, France, Germany, India, Japan, Singapore, United Kingdom, United States) that are influential in their organization's future AI purchases. The survey was conducted in collaboration with Omdia by Informa TechTarget between August 13, 2025, and September 17, 2025. All figures are rounded to the nearest whole number, with values below .5 rounded down and .5 and above rounded up.

About Snowflake
Snowflake is the platform for the AI era, making it easy for enterprises to innovate faster and get more value from data. More than 13,300 customers around the globe, including hundreds of the world's largest companies, use Snowflake's AI Data Cloud to build, use and share data, applications and AI. With Snowflake, data and AI are transformative for everyone. Learn more at snowflake.com (NYSE: SNOW).