Published 2026
If you've found it harder to fill a psychology vacancy over the past couple of years — or harder to get a look-in as a candidate with too many roles and not enough hours in the day — the data backs up what you're seeing on the ground.
The Australian Government's Department of Health, Disability and Ageing released its Psychology Supply and Demand Compendium Report in April 2026, and the headline figure is stark: psychologists in health settings faced an estimated 57.3% undersupply in 2025, a gap projected to widen substantially over the following decade as demand for mental health support continues to outpace the number of clinicians entering the workforce.
It isn't simply a case of too few people training as psychologists. The report projects the workforce itself will grow by roughly 34% over the 15 years to 2038 — a genuine increase in headcount. The problem is that demand is projected to grow even faster, particularly as unmet need (people who should be accessing psychological care but currently aren't) gets factored into the modelling. When that unmet demand is accounted for, the shortfall is projected to rise from around 10,270 full-time-equivalent psychologists in 2025 to more than 24,000 FTE by 2038.
A separate, earlier analysis from the Department — the Mental Health Workforce Labour Market Analysis — adds useful context on why this gap persists. It points to a mix of attraction and retention challenges across the mental health workforce more broadly, noting that while some professions (including psychologists) have relatively direct pathways into the sector, retaining people once they're in the workforce remains a persistent challenge industry-wide.
For clinics, schools, and community health services trying to build out their psychology teams, this data is a useful reality check: the shortage isn't a temporary blip, and it isn't going to resolve itself through natural workforce growth alone. It reinforces the case for working with a recruitment partner who specialises specifically in this space, rather than treating psychology hiring as a generic recruitment problem.
For psychologists weighing up their own career options, the same data points the other way: demand for your skills is only going to keep growing, particularly outside the major capital cities — which is a story we cover in more detail in our companion piece on regional and rural allied health workforce trends.