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- While the unemployment rate has dipped to its lowest point since the 1970s, Australians are also changing jobs and careers at the fastest pace in a decade
- New data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show job churn over the year to February 2022 rose to its highest level since February 2012
- The ABS says 9.5 per cent of employed people changed their employer or business over the 12 months to February this year
- The increase in job churn was more pronounced for women, rising to 10 per cent from 7.6 per cent the year before
- The last year also saw a decrease in the number of people who were not working but wanted to work, falling to 1.8 million people from 2.2 million people the year before
While the unemployment rate has dipped to its lowest point since the 1970s, Australians are also changing jobs and careers at the fastest pace in a decade.
New data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show job mobility over the year to February 2022 — which refers to the number of people who changed jobs during the year as a proportion of people who were employed at the end of the year — rose to its highest level since February 2012.
According to ABS Head of Labour Statistics Bjorn Jarvis, 9.5 per cent of employed people changed their employer or business over 12 months to February 2022.
“Job mobility in Australia had generally been trending down for decades and reached a record low of 7.5 per cent during the first year of the pandemic,” Mr Jarvis explained.
“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 said this was an increase of around 300,000 people compared to the year to February 2021 and an increase of 220,000 people compared to the year before the pandemic hit in February 2020.
Alongside the increase in job churn was a decrease in the number of people who were not working but wanted to work, falling to 1.8 million people in the year to February 2022 compared to 2.2 million the year before.
This was broken down into around 560,000 unemployed people and 1.2 million people not in the labour force — meaning they were either not actively looking for work or were not available to work.
Of those changing jobs, the ABS said the increase in job churn was more pronounced for women, rising to 10 per cent from 7.6 per cent the year before. The number of men changing jobs rose to 9.1 per cent from 7.5 per cent.
Meanwhile, on an industry level, all industries showed an increase in job mobility except for mining, which fell to 11.3 per cent from 11.8 per cent.
Moreover, the ABS said people were more like to change industries than occupations and typically swapped to jobs with more hours rather than a job with the same hours.
The data follows a release from the ABS last week showing the seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate fell to 3.9 per cent in April — its lowest point since 1974.
