Job mobility at its highest in over 10 years

New data has shown that workers are becoming increasingly mobile in their careers. What’s driving this?

According to recent data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), job mobility is at its highest since 2012, remaining at 9.5 per cent for the second year in a row.

“In the 12 months to February 2023, 1.3 million or 9.5 per cent of employed people changed their employer or business. This was the same as the year ending February 2022, meaning job mobility remained at its highest rate in a decade,” said Bjorn Jarvis, ABS head of labour statistics.

“Job mobility in Australia has generally been trending down for decades and reached a record low of 7.5 per cent during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. While the 2023 figure might be higher and is, in fact, the highest it’s been since the early 2010s, it’s still relatively low compared to earlier decades.”

Surprisingly, workers were more likely to change their industry than their occupation.

“People were more likely to change their industry, at 58 per cent, than their occupation, which was 44 per cent, in the year ending in February 2023,” Mr Jarvis said.

“Over the year, 37 per cent of people changed to a job with the same usual hours, while 33 per cent changed to a job with more hours, and only 30 per cent changed to a job with fewer hours.”

The data shows that younger workers are more likely to switch positions, with 14.9 per cent of people aged 15 to 24 changing jobs. Following was 11.2 per cent of 25- to 44-year-olds and 5.9 per cent of 45- to 64-year-olds.

Job mobility was slightly higher for men, at 9.7 per cent. Women saw rates of 9.4 per cent.

ABS revealed that most industries saw an increase in job mobility, with electricity, gas, water and waste services seeing the biggest increase of 4.2 per cent. Next was transport, postal and warehousing, up 3.4 per cent, and rental, hiring and real estate services, up 2.9 per cent.

Fortunately for employers, a slow turnaround in the talent market could lessen job mobility issues, as between February 2022 and February 2023, employment rose from 13.4 million people to 13.8 million.

However, the number of potential workers without a job remained the same, at 1.4 million people in the same period.

For workers, things may be looking up. Underemployment dropped slightly between February 2022 and February 2023, falling by 5,700 people.

Underemployment refers to people who are not working their desired number of hours. As of May 2023, 1,594,400 workers of the 14.1 million total workers were underemployed.

Of the underemployed part-time workers, 44.5 per cent said they’d prefer to work full-time. Half of the underemployed part-time workers would like an extra 10 hours or less work per week, and 37.3 per cent of underemployed part-time workers spent a year or more working in a job with insufficient hours.

With talent shortages still very much an issue for organisations and job mobility at decade-long highs, employers may benefit by addressing issues of underemployment to help keep workers around.

Jack Campbell

Jack is the editor at HR Leader.