Statistics from the Characteristics of Employment survey are published in four topic-based releases:
Characteristics of Employment, Australia
Latest release
Weekly earnings of employees, casual workers, independent contractors, trade union membership, labour hire, job flexibility, job security
Reference period
August 2024
Released
9/12/2024
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.
- 36% of employed people usually worked from home, down from 37% in Aug 2023.
- There were 1.1 million independent contractors (7.5% of all employed).
- 13.1% of employees (1.6 million) were trade union members in their main job, an increase on the 12.5% recorded in August 2022.
- Median employee earnings in main job was $1,396 per week, up $96 (7.4%) since August 2023.
- Median hourly earnings in main job was $40.00 per hour, up $0.30 since August 2023.
Data downloads
Employee earnings
Data files
Table 1 - Employee earnings, 1975-2024
Table 2 - Median earnings for employees by demographic characteristics
Table 3 - Distribution of earnings for employees by industry
Table 4a - Distribution of earnings for employees by occupation and skill level
Table 4b - Distribution of earnings for employees by occupation (detailed)
Table 5 - Distribution of earnings for employees by educational qualification
Table 6 - Median earnings for employees by industry, occupation and educational qualification
Table 7 - Median earnings for multiple job holders
Table 8 - Distribution of earnings, 1989-2024
Earnings guide
To learn more about the earnings data collected by the ABS, refer to our Guide to labour statistics. It provides summary information on labour market topics including Earnings data.
Working arrangements
Data files
Table 1 - Job flexibility and Job security
Table 2 - Median earnings for employees and OMIEs by demographic characteristics
Table 3 - Form of employment by demographic characteristics
Table 4 - Form of employment by industry, occupation and educational qualification
Table 5 - Independent contractors by whether had authority over own work
Table 6 - Employees on a fixed-term contract
Table 7 - Casual experience
Table 8 - Digital platform workers
Trade Union Membership
Data files
Table 1 - Median earnings by full-time or part-time, state and trade union members in main job
Table 2 - Median earnings for employees by trade union membership
Table 3 - Median earnings for employees by duration (length) of current trade union membership
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 previously used catalogue number 6333.0.