Most workers staying in the same job

More than 10 million people working in Australia stayed in their current job over the year ending February 2019, according to statistics released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) today.

Head of Labour Statistics Bjorn Jarvis said that this equated to eight out of every ten workers having been in a job for 12 months or more.

“The last decade has seen fewer people leaving or losing their jobs." Mr Jarvis said. “This has been especially true for women, with 15 per cent of all women who worked in the year leaving or losing a job, down from 19 per cent in 2008. This compared to 14 per cent for men in 2019, down from 17 per cent in 2008.”

While people stayed in their jobs for longer, the number who wanted to work more hours also increased over the last decade.

"Over one million Australians were underemployed in 2019. That is, they wanted to work more hours and were available to work those extra hours. This was 8.2 per cent of the total labour force, up from 7.6 per cent in 2009.”

”Forty-six per cent of underemployed workers in 2019 reported that they had been working insufficient hours for a year or longer – with the median duration of underemployment now at 39 weeks, up from 26 weeks back in 2009.”

However, while underemployment increased over the last decade, in the last year it fell 26,000 to 1.1 million in 2019.

Further details, including articles on understanding potential labour supply, and retrospective comparisons of underemployment in 1962 and 1985 can be found in Participation, Job Search and Mobility, Australia (cat. no. 6226.0) available for free download from www.abs.gov.au.