Working arrangements

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Working arrangements and forms of employment, such as casual work, fixed-term, independent contractors, shift work, job flexibility and job security

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Reference period
August 2024

Key statistics

In August 2024:

  • 2.6 million employees did not have paid leave entitlements (22% of employees, and 18% of all employed).
  • 20% of employees considered their job to be casual.
  • 4.2% of employees were employed on a fixed-term contract.
  • There were 1.1 million independent contractors (7.5% of all employed).
  • 18% of employees didn't have minimum guaranteed hours, down from 21% in August 2022.
  • 36% of employed people usually worked from home, down from 37% in Aug 2023.
  • 56% of employees were entitled to employer provided paid parental leave.

Other topics

Statistics from the Characteristics of Employment survey are also published in three other topic-based releases:

Casual employment

While there is no single measure of people in casual employment, a commonly used proxy measure is employees without paid (holiday or sick) leave entitlements. In addition to holiday and sick leave entitlements, the ABS also asks employees whether they consider their job to be casual. For more information, refer to Labour Statistics: Concepts, Sources and Methods.

In August 2024, there were 2.6 million employees who were not entitled to paid holiday or paid sick leave in their main job. This represents 22% of employees, and 18% of all employed people.

For employees who work part-time in their main job, 49% did not have paid leave entitlements (1.9 million).

There were 2.4 million employees (20% of all employees) who consider their job to be casual.

Quarterly estimates from August 2014 onwards are sourced from Labour Force, Australia, Detailed.

Paid leave entitlements are more common among higher paid workers. In August 2024, 92% of employees who earned the median wage of $1,396 per week or more were entitled to either paid sick leave or paid holiday leave, or both.

For employees in the lowest 25 per cent of earners (less than $899 per week), 47% had paid sick leave or paid holiday leave entitlements.

There are several other characteristics often associated with casual jobs. In August 2024:

  • 23% of employees have earnings that vary from one period to the next (excluding overtime payments) (2.8 million).
  • 17% of employees do not usually work the same number of hours each week (2.0 million).
  • 18% of employees do not have a guaranteed minimum number of hours each week (2.2 million).
  • 10% of employees do not expect to be working for their current employer in 12 months (1.2 million).

Casual employees converting to non-casual employment

To better understand people's preferences for casual work, and whether they have had discussions with their employer about converting from casual to non-casual employment, data has been collected since 2022-23 in the Multi-Purpose Household Survey. It is important to note that there are provisions within the Fair Work Act that may influence decisions that employees and employers make around changing between casual and non-casual employment.

In 2023-24, 75% of casual employees indicated that they currently preferred casual employment (72% of male casual employees and 77% of female casual employees).

Of those casuals who preferred casual employment, the main reasons they preferred casual employment were:

  • flexibility (53%)
  • higher hourly pay rate (22%)

Of those casuals who do not prefer casual employment, the main aspects of casual employment they would want to change were:

  • to have paid leave entitlements (31%)
  • more secure employment (21%)

Most (75%) casual employees had not had a discussion with their employer about changing their employment from a casual to non-casual arrangement. Of those people, 57% indicated casual employment was currently their preferred type of employment.

Working time arrangements

For employed people in August 2024:

  • 26% had an agreement to work flexible hours.
  • 36% usually worked from home.
  • 32% usually worked extra hours or overtime.

For employed people in August 2023

  • 19% were usually required to be on call or standby, down from 22% in 2021.

Independent contractors

Additional questions in the Characteristics of Employment survey allow employment relationships to be reclassified according to the 'Form of employment', which enables the identification of 'Independent contractors'. See the Methodology page for a description of the Forms of employment framework, and how people are classified to it.

In August 2024, there were 1.1 million independent contractors, an increase on the 1.0 million recorded in August 2023. This represents 7.5% of all employed people.

The industries where independent contracting was most common were Construction (24% of people employed in Construction), Administrative and support services (19%) and Arts and recreation services (13%).

For more information on Industries, refer to Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification (ANZSIC)

The occupations with the highest proportions of Independent Contractors were:

  • Technicians and trades workers (15%).
  • Labourers (10%).
  • Machinery operators and drivers (10%).

Data is coded to ANZSCO ver 1.2. For more information on Occupations and Skill level, refer to ANZSCO - Australian and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations

Working from home

In August 2024, 36% of employed people usually worked from home.

The ABS has measured the number of people working from home since 1970. Between 1989 and 2008, around 20-30% of people worked from home, with around 4% to 8% working most of their hours from home. In August 2021, working from home had increased to 40%. The rates seen during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021 were the highest ever recorded.

The ABS measured people working from home during the pandemic in the Household Impacts of COVID-19 Survey. While it is not directly comparable with estimates from the Characteristics of Employment Survey, it showed that between September 2020 and June 2021, about 40% of employed people were working from home, with 20-30% working most of their hours from home.

Worked from home last week: (a) Journey to Work and Journey to School, 1970-1974, (b) Persons Employed at Home, 1989-1995, (d) Locations of Work, 2000-2008; - Usually works from home: (c) Employment Arrangements, Retirement and Superannuation, 2000-2007, (e) Characteristics of Employment, 2015-2023; - Worked from home in last four weeks: (f) Household Impacts of COVID-19 Survey, 2020-2022

In 2024, the main reason people usually worked from home was to work more flexibly or choose own hours (25%), followed by operates business from home or home based job (23%) and to catch up on work after hours (21%).  

In August 2024, 60% of managers and professionals usually worked form home, compared with 21% for all other occupations. 

People who worked from home were more likely to:

  • work overtime (43% of people who worked from home worked overtime, compared with 25% of those who did not work from home).
  • have an agreement to work flexible hours (48%, compared with 22%).

Fixed-term contracts

In August 2024, 4.2% of employees were employed on a fixed-term contract (512,000 employees). Of these:

  • 35% were working on a contract with a total term length of 1 year or less.
  • 59% were working on a contract with a total term length of 1 to 4 years.
  • 6% were working on a contract with a total term length of 5 or more years.

70% of employees on a fixed-term contract expected their contract to be renewed and 75% expect to be working in their current job in 12 months' time. In comparison, 91% of employees not on a fixed-term contract expect to be in their current job in 12 months time.

The median weekly earnings for employees on a fixed-term contract were $1,574, compared with $1,381 for employees who were not on a fixed-term contract.

The industries with the highest proportion of employees on a fixed-term contract were:

  • Education and training (11%).
  • Public administration and safety (8%).
  • Arts and Recreation Services (8%).

Digital platform workers

Since 2022-23, the ABS has collected information on digital platform workers in the Multi-Purpose Household Survey (MPHS). For information on the framework used to measure digital platform work and workers, see Labour Statistics: Concepts, Sources and Methods. The framework shows how the ABS has defined and scoped digital platform work and the classification of tasks undertaken by people who are paid-per-task.

Given the relatively low prevalence of digital platform work in Australia, for 2023-24, data was collected for a 12 month period. In 2022-23, data on digital platform work was only collected for the previous four weeks. In 2023-24, information was also collected from everyone in households. This ensured a larger sample of digital platform workers to better understand their working arrangements, including periods of time they had worked. Data for 2023-24 are therefore not directly comparable with 2022-23. The ABS is exploring ways to make additional insights from the data.

In 2023-24, 1.2% of employed people had undertaken digital platform work in the last 12 months. Of these:

  • 71% were male
  • 68% did not consider digital platform work to be their main job
  • 48% had been undertaking digital platform work for less than one year
  • the most common digital platform work tasks were Delivering food and other goods and Providing personal transport
  • 43% preferred wage-based employment to digital platform work

Data downloads

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Working arrangements

Data files

Microdata and TableBuilder

August 2024 Characteristics of Employment data will be released in Tablebuilder and microdata in ABS DataLab (as a supplementary file for the Longitudinal Labour Force (LLFS) microdata) on 19 December 2024. For more information, refer to Microdata and TableBuilder: Characteristics of Employment.

Previous catalogue number

This release uses ABS catalogue number 6336.0.

Post release changes

10/12/2024
Data on working from home by occupation and working arrangements was updated with August 2024 data.

Methodology

Characteristics of Employment, Australia methodology, August 2024