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2026 Australian State of the Trades Report

We surveyed over 1,000 tradies across Australia to find out how they're really running. What we found: the smartest operators have stopped chasing new customers and started fixing how the work actually gets done.

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Data from senior decision-makers across over 1,000 Australian trade businesses reveals three fundamental, intersecting shifts:

  • Billing and Accounts Receivable (AR) is the runaway pain point: A staggering 57% of operators cite Billing/AR as their #1 operational pain point, exploding from 20% last year—a massive 37-point surge in 12 months.

  • Operational inversion: For the first time, a purely operational goal—streamlining operations—has displaced traditional revenue or profit-per-job targets at the top of the priority stack. Operators are planning to run better rather than simply pushing harder on top-line volume.

  • The AI belief-to-action gap: While 63% of trade businesses believe AI is relevant to their business, only 38% are currently utilising it, leaving a 25-point gap between technology perception and active field implementation.

For more analysis of trends and insights, download the report.