A Demographic Inversion
Five years ago, a new Australian sole trader was most likely a photographer, designer, or copywriter. By 2026, they are just as likely to be a cleaner, personal trainer, or construction contractor. This reversal, documented in comprehensive sign-up data from sole trader accounting platform Rounded, represents one of the most significant shifts in Australia’s self-employment landscape in decades.
Creative and content occupations—graphic design, photography, copywriting, web design, and video production—constituted 44.7 per cent of new sole trader sign-ups in 2021. By 2026, that share had collapsed to 30.4 per cent. Over the same period, physical and in-person work categories rose from 18.3 per cent to 28.3 per cent.
The Magnitude of Decline
The specific figures are stark. Writing and journalism sign-ups fell 58 per cent. Graphic design dropped 35 per cent. Web design declined 32 per cent. Photography decreased 26 per cent. Digital marketing was down 18 per cent, and video production fell 15 per cent.
Conversely, cleaning surged 77 per cent as a share of sign-ups. Health and fitness rose 75 per cent. IT consulting increased 54 per cent, and construction climbed 46 per cent.
What’s Driving the Inversion?
Rounded co-founder Oliver Garside was careful not to attribute the shift to a single cause. The steepest fall in creative sign-ups occurred between 2021 and late 2022, with a second, smaller decline beginning in early 2025—suggesting two separate movements rather than one continuous trend.
The first wave coincides with the post-pandemic normalisation of digital services spending and the initial proliferation of accessible AI content generation tools. The second wave aligns with the maturation of those tools and their integration into routine business workflows.
The MIT Work of the Future Task Force estimated that approximately 23 per cent of freelance tasks existing in 2023 had been substantially automated by early 2025, with generalist creative work disproportionately affected. This finding corroborates Rounded’s sign-up data.
The Physical Work Advantage
While digital and creative work is highly susceptible to automation and offshore competition, physical, in-person services retain inherent barriers to displacement. A cleaner cannot be replicated by a language model. A personal trainer cannot be offshored. A construction contractor must be physically present.
This isn’t to suggest that creative work is disappearing entirely. Specialist positions in high-regulation industries—healthcare writing, financial compliance content, technical documentation—remain resilient. The decline is concentrated in the generalist middle: work that was skilled enough to require a human in 2022 but not specialised enough to resist automation by 2025.
Implications for Australian SMEs
For business owners, this shift has practical consequences. Access to affordable creative freelance talent may become more constrained as the supply of creative sole traders contracts. Conversely, the availability of physical service providers—cleaners, tradespeople, maintenance professionals—is expanding.
The broader lesson concerns resilience. Businesses whose models depend on readily automatable creative outputs should assess their exposure. Those leveraging human-dependent, location-specific services may find themselves on more stable ground.
The median lifespan of a sole trader business on the Rounded platform is just two years and three months. In a sector with such rapid turnover, the composition of the next cohort of sole traders will look very different from the last. Business owners must plan accordingly.