When it comes to jobs, one is not enough for many Australians
Amid the sour news on the economy one aspect has continued to retain some sweetness – jobs. Despite slowing economic growth, solid job growth has continued. While the unemployment rate has risen this year, it is easier to find a job now than it has been for many years. But what the latest labour account figures highlight is that with this good news is a worrying sign that now, more than any time in the past, people are working more than one job.
The quarterly labour account figures are a work in progress by the Bureau of Statistics. They have only been gathered for two years now as they try to marry up the figures in the GDP numbers and the monthly labour force figures.
They are one of the more fascinating sets of data for economists because they provide information not just on who is employed in which industries, but how many actual jobs exist – and the reality is that there are more jobs than there are employed people:
In the June quarter this year there were 14.53m jobs available in Australia. Of these, 14.28m were filled by a worker, and they were being done by 13.3m people. The reason there are fewer workers than there are jobs is because, of course, some people work more than one job.
Until now the ABS has only been able to provide us with the number of main and secondary jobs but not the same information on employees. In this latest release, for the first time we have
a count of the number of employees working more than one job.
In June there were 797,400 people working multiple jobs – a record 6% of employees.
The figures also provide us with information about how many jobs are “secondary jobs” and what percentage of workers are working in more than one job. In June, 6.7% of all jobs were not actually that person’s main job:
The reason the two figures are not the same is because around 160,000 people work more than two jobs.
What is interesting is that in the past six months, while the number of people working more than one job has increased by 6.6% (compared with the overall employment increase of 2.8%) there has been a large drop in the number of people working more than two jobs.
This is why there has actually been a slowing of the growth of “secondary jobs” but an increase in the growth of workers doing multiple jobs. It would seem that most of the slowing in the growth of “secondary jobs” is actually a slowing of people working in a “third” or “fourth” job.
And while it is too early to suggest any link, it is interesting that since the start of March, while the unemployment rate fell, the level of people working multiple jobs rose:
The figures also give us some insight into the fight for work across each industry.
In the June quarter there were 247,100 vacant jobs, and 701,500 unemployed. This makes for 2.8 unemployed per vacancy – a very slight increase on the 2.7 per vacancy in December last year, but still a historically low level.
Even if we add the 1.14m underemployed person who could theoretically be after one of those vacant jobs we still arrive at a relatively low level of 7.5 underutilised workers per vacancy:
But what the figures show is that there is a great difference across industries when it comes to available work.
It appears that the greatest percentage of vacant jobs is in industries with low levels of multiple job holders:
We need to take some care with the numbers of unemployed per vacancy across each industry. The figures exclude 40% of the unemployed because the industry unemployment figures are based on the industry of a person’s last job worked (within the last two years). This of course excludes people entering or re-entering the workforce and also ignores (knowingly) that people can look for work across a number of industries.
But it is clear that while the level of vacant jobs in an industry appears linked to the level of multiple job holders, the fight for work is not.
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The industries in which there are the fewest unemployed per vacancy are healthcare, mining, finance, and administration and support – industries that have quite varied levels of multiple workers.
The labour account figures are a very useful addition to our understanding of the economy. The marriage of jobs with employed allows us to better understand what type of jobs are being created and in what industries. It also allows us to see the sizeable increase in people working more than one job. With 6% of all employees now working multiple jobs it means that there are as many people doing that as there are unemployed.
In an era where job security and wages growth remain pre-eminent concerns, this new data will allow us to see whether the growing number of people working more than one job is a temporary rise, or a sign of things to come.
• Greg Jericho writes on economics for Guardian Australia