The number of Australians changing jobs has fallen to pre-pandemic levels, according to new data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
The number of people changing their employer fell to just 8 per cent in the 12 months to February and it has some experts suggesting “quiet quitting” could be in the past.
“This was down 1.5 percentage points from 9.6 per cent in February 2023 and back to around what we typically saw during the five years leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic,” Bjorn Jarvis, ABS head of labour statistics, said.
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While the period after the pandemic saw a spike in the number of people changing jobs, recent economic conditions have brought that rate back down to its pre-pandemic average.
The job mobility rate, which measures how many people changed jobs, was lower in almost every industry.
This was most pronounced in the arts and recreation, transport, post and warehousing sectors.
In information media and telecommunications, 1.8 per cent more people changed jobs.
The overall “job mobility” rate fell for both men and women but fell by more for men.
“As a result, job mobility over the past year was slightly higher for women at 8.2 per cent, compared to 7.9 per cent for men, after having been higher for men for most of the past decade,” Jarvis said.
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Some experts say the lower job mobility rate could be a symptom of current economic conditions.
“The sharp drop in job mobility for the first time in three years is a clear indication that the power balance in the Australian job market is shifting,” human resources firm Reward Gateway’s managing director Kylie Green said.
“Contrary to the ‘quiet quitting’ and ‘loud labouring’ trends that gathered steam during the pandemic, external pressures including the rising cost of living and widespread redundancies has led to a 4 per cent increase in tenure across all age groups.”
Quiet quitting refers to an employee doing the bare minimum tasks required in a job, often with a level of disengagement.
Loud labouring refers to those who spend more time talking about work than actually doing it.
Besides the lower rate of job mobility, the latest ABS data showed there were more than 1.9 million potential workers, meaning people who were not working but wanted to be.
That was up from 1.8 million in February 2023.
In February, 82 per cent of unemployed people reported having difficulty finding work.
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