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Staying put: Pandemic puts damper on moves to change jobs

A year of COVID-19 job losses and business uncertainty has stopped many people from finding a new boss.

Jul 07, 2021, updated Jul 07, 2021
Job mobility has reached a new low during the COVID-19 pandemic. Image: Unsplash

Job mobility has reached a new low during the COVID-19 pandemic. Image: Unsplash

Australian Bureau of Statistics data on job mobility released on Wednesday showed 975,000 or 7.5 per cent of employed people changed jobs, the lowest annual job mobility rate on record.

Some 1.8 million people left or lost a job in the year to February 2021.

Job hopping remained highest for professionals, with 21 per cent managing to change jobs during the pandemic.

“Job mobility in Australia has been generally trending down for decades and reached a new low during the first year of the pandemic,” ABS head labour statistician Bjorn Jarvis said.

Around 82,000 fewer people changed jobs than in the year before.

Jarvis said during the first year of the pandemic, people were more likely to change their industry than their occupation.

Workers were also more likely to change to a job with more hours than to a job with the same hours or fewer.

It was harder for men to switch jobs, with mobility down from 8.4 per cent to 7.5 per cent, compared with women at 7.8 per cent, up from 7.6 per cent.

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Borders are closed to foreign workers, leading to job shortages and more demand in some sectors.

The occupation group winning the largest increase was accommodation and food services, with mobility now 17.1 per cent compared with 14.3 per cent before the pandemic.

Job mobility also increased for community and personal service workers, and was steady for clerical and administrative staff. Labourers were also more mobile.

But sales workers, and technicians and trade workers, were less able to job hop.

There were 2.2 million people who were not working but wanted to work, up from 2.1 million people a year earlier.

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