Australia’s job mobility reaches highest level in a decade

Job mobility in Australia rose to its highest level in a decade, according to official statistics from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

“In the 12 months to February 2022, 9.5% of employed people changed their employer or business. This was the highest job mobility rate in a decade (since the year ending February 2012),” said Bjorn Jarvis, head of Labour Statistics at the ABS.

“Job mobility in Australia had generally been trending down for decades and reached a record low of 7.5% during the first year of the pandemic,” said Jarvis. 

“As the labour market has progressively recovered, we have seen an increase in job mobility, with 1.3 million people changing jobs during the second year of the pandemic,” he noted. The figure is around 300,000 more people than the year before, Jarvis added. 

“Some of the increase over the second year of the pandemic will be delayed or deferred job mobility from the first year,” he said. 

READ: Australia’s jobless rate hits 50-year low in April

In February this year, there were 745,000 people in February 2022 who wanted to work, were available to start within four weeks, but did not actively look for work. 

The main reasons cited were because they were attending an educational institution (147,000 people), childcare factors (114,000 people) and factors indicating that they were a ‘discouraged job seeker’ (88,000 people).