Engineered tailings storage emerged from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as downstream damage from the uncontrolled discharge of mine waste into waterways prompted community campaigns, government inquiries, and regulatory intervention, including Victoria's Sludge Abatement Board, established in the early 1900s to control mining waste on the goldfields.1 Modern tailings dams are designed to safely contain mining waste on site and minimise contamination of waterways and surrounding ecosystems (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Mine-to-Tailings Lifecycle
Employment in Tailings Activities
Tailings facilities exist on most mine sites. Given that the management and operation of the facility are part of business as usual at the site, it is difficult to cleanly identify the exact employment footprint of tailings facilities. However, the ramifications of a failure at a tailings facility would affect all personnel at a mine site, causing significant disruption (Appendix A). Although there are more than 50,000 employees in related ANZSCO occupations, professionals working specifically in tailings management are expected to be considerably smaller and embedded within engineering, mining, environmental, and operational occupations (Table 1). With approximately 80 new, expanded, and reactivated mining projects,2 demand for these skills is expected to increase for a skilled workforce with the specialised capabilities required to design, operate, monitor, and manage tailings facilities safely and effectively.
The employment figures show the total size of each occupation within the mining industry, not tailings employment: they represent an upper bound within which tailings-specific roles form a small fraction. Job advertisement data suggests the tailings-specific workforce numbers in the low thousands nationally, embedded within these much larger occupational groups.
Table 1: Occupations in which tailings-related roles are embedded
Source: ABS, “Table Builder 2021 Census”, 2022; Job titles retrieved from Australian job advertisements on LinkedIn Jobs, Indeed and SEEK, using the search term "Tailings jobs in Australia"; The search identified 133 job advertisements on LinkedIn, 75 on Indeed, and 133 on SEEK, accessed 14 July 2026. Note: Employment figures are 2021 Census counts of persons employed in each occupation within the mining industry; tailings-specific roles are a subset of these figures. These figures indicate the occupational pools within which tailings roles sit and should not be read as estimates of tailings employment.
This demand is reinforced by the Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management (GISTM), introduced in 2020 following the Brumadinho disaster, which requires operators to appoint designated accountable roles for every facility, including an Engineer of Record and a Responsible Tailings Facility Engineer, and has driven a marked increase in recruitment of tailings specialists across major mining companies.
Tailings training products
There are 4 current units of competency relevant to tailings (Table 2).
Table 2: Units of competency relevant to tailings, enrolments, and the number of RTOs with the unit on scope, 2025
Source: Training.gov.au, “RTO search results”, 2026; VOCSTATS, "Total VET students and courses", July 2026.
Notably, all 4 existing units sit at operator level (AQF Certificate II to III equivalent); the training product system currently contains no tailings-specific units at the supervisory, technical, or managerial levels at which tailings risk is actually governed.
Certificate II in Resource Processing, commonly undertaken by Process Operators (Mineral Processing) who are involved in tailings handling, processing plant operations, and the safe management of materials generated,3 tends to have a strong reliance on training products containing tailings-related units.4
Beyond the core training product system, tailings competencies also intersect with regulatory instruments. In Queensland, Recognised Standard 22 (RS22), made under the Coal Mining Safety and Health Act 1999, requires the Site Senior Executive to state the competencies for each position in the mine's management structure, consistent with the levels of responsibility described in the Australian Qualifications Framework and the RII Training Package. Under RS22's coal sector qualification pathway, supervisory and senior positions align with Certificate IV, Diploma and Advanced Diploma levels respectively. This framework depends on the RII Training Package containing units relevant to the hazards at each mine. Stakeholders identified a capability gap in this respect: the RII Training Package contains no unit addressing water rescue in mining environments such as tailings storage facilities, water storage dams or thickeners. Where training is delivered, some sites draw on PUASAR001 Perform land based swiftwater and floodwater rescue and recovery from the Public Safety Training Package; however, that unit is designed for emergency services personnel operating in natural and urban floodwater environments, and does not address the hazards specific to tailings and mine water infrastructure, including engineered embankments, thickened or non-Newtonian slurries, entrapment in soft tailings, and chemical exposure.
Currently, more than 1,050 sites across Australia contain historical and operational tailings, with the mining industry generating approximately 620 million tonnes of waste annually. This waste is stored in around 250 active tailings dams nationwide.5
Between 1965 and 2020, major tailings storage facilities worldwide experienced failure rates of approximately 1.2–1.8%, with each significant failure resulting in an average of 64–98 fatalities.6
In addition to the loss of life, these failures can cause extensive environmental damage and significant financial impacts, with remediation costs often reaching hundreds of millions of dollars. The 2019 collapse of the Brumadinho iron ore tailings dam in Brazil, which claimed 270 lives,7 demonstrates the potentially catastrophic outcomes of tailings storage facility failures (Appendix A).
Conclusion
Australia's tailings workforce is small, specialised, and embedded within broader engineering, geoscience, and operational occupations, yet the consequences of capability failure are borne by entire mine sites, downstream communities, and the environment. The training product system reflects this invisibility: only 4 units of competency directly address tailings, with a combined 166 enrolments in 2024, and regulatory instruments such as RS22 presuppose RII coverage of mine hazards that, for tailings and mine water infrastructure, does not yet exist. With around 250 active tailings dams, a pipeline of approximately 80 new, expanded, and reactivated projects, and heightened expectations under the Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management, demand for these capabilities will grow faster than the current training ecosystem can supply them.8
Considering the gaps identified in this bulletin, 3 developments in the RII Training Package warrant consideration.
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First, there is a need for units of competency and skill sets covering tailings maintenance and surveillance for mine workers and supervisors, reflecting the monitoring and information collection required around water bores, seepage, cracking, and the structural integrity of tailings dams. This subject matter is not covered as part of the existing units of competencies relating to operators (Table 2).
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Second, there is a need for higher-level training products, potentially at the Diploma and Advanced Diploma levels, integrating the governance, safety, risk, and engineering protocols for tailings facilities, aligned with mine closure requirements. A suite structured across the levels of responsibility, following the model already used in the RII Training Package for outburst management (conduct operations, apply and monitor, implement, and establish and maintain the management plan) would be suitable for industry needs.
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Third, the water rescue gap identified by stakeholders warrants further investigation around the need for a dedicated unit of competency or skill set addressing rescue and recovery in mine water environments, including tailings storage facilities, water storage dams, and thickeners, reflecting hazards not covered by existing public safety units.
We welcome feedback on these findings.
Appendix
Appendix A: Tailings dam incidents
Source: Lumbroso, Darren, Caitlin McElroy, Craig Goff, Marta Roca, Gregor Petkovsek, and Mark Wetton, "The Potential to Reduce the Risks Posed by Tailings Dams Using Satellite-Based Information.", 2019, International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 38: 101209, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2019.101209
Table 2: Units of competency relevant to tailings, enrolments, and the number of RTOs with the unit on scope, 2025
Appendix B: Enrolment of Tailings-related units, 2015 - 2024
Source: VOCSTATS, "Total VET students and courses", July 2026.
1 Lawrence, Susan, and Peter Davies. 2019. Sludge: Disaster on Victoria's Goldfields. Melbourne: La Trobe University Press.
2 AREEA, “Workforce Forecast 2025 – 2030”, September 2025.
3 Training.gov, “RII20520 Certificate II in Resource Processing”, 2026.
4 NCVER VOCSTATS, “TVA program enrolments 2015-2024”, 2025.
5 CSIRO, “From pottery clay to moon bricks: How mining waste could solve two global crises”, 5 November 2025.
6 CSIRO, “From pottery clay to moon bricks: How mining waste could solve two global crises”, 5 November 2025.
7 CSIRO, “From pottery clay to moon bricks: How mining waste could solve two global crises”, 5 November 2025.
8 ANCOLD, “Tailings Dam Safety Principles”, 2026.
About the author
Kayley Ooi
Kayley is a Research Analyst in the Workforce Planning and Policy team. She turns complex data into forward-looking insights.
About the author
Dr Aneeq Sarwar
Dr Aneeq Sarwar is Senior Manager, Workforce Planning and Policy at AUSMASA, overseeing our research, workforce planning, and policy functions. Dr Sarwar is an experienced research leader who has managed quantitative and qualitative research projects across industry, academia, and for government.