Participation, Job Search and Mobility, Australia

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Labour participation potential, underemployment and job attachment, job search experience, labour mobility, hours worked, industry and occupation.

Reference period
February 2022
Released
24/05/2022

Key statistics

During the year ending February 2022:

  • 1.8 million people were not working but wanted to work (potential workers).
  • 1.3 million people (or 9.5% of employed people) changed jobs, the highest annual job mobility rate since 2012.
  • The annual retrenchment rate was 1.5%, the lowest annual rate on record (since 1972).

What's new this issue?

New table formats

The results from the February 2022 Participation, Job Search and Mobility survey are published below using new table formats. These new table formats incorporate two changes:

  • State and territory data now available in all tables
  • Tables are renumbered by topic

Some tables also incorporate additional age group data.

Release schedule for February 2022 release

There are a number of planned changes to the February 2022 release of Participation, Job Search and Mobility (PJSM). 

The release of PJSM data into TableBuilder has been delayed until later in the year in order to prepare for the release of 2021 Census data in TableBuilder. PJSM microdata will instead be published in ABS DataLab as a supplementary file for the Longitudinal Labour Force microdata.

On 24 May 2022:

  • Potential workers for February 2022 is available now.
  • Job mobility for February 2022 is available now.
  • This page has tables with February 2022 data for all three PJSM topics in Data downloads, including Underemployed workers.

On 27 May 2022:

On 24 Jun 2022:

  • Underemployed workers is predominately based on underemployment data from the Labour Force survey and will be updated with the latest data from the May 2022 Labour Force survey. It will also be supplemented with February 2022 PJSM data on underemployed part-time workers (available now on this page in Data downloads). 

Data downloads

How to use tables

Potential workers

Data files
Data files

Underemployed workers

Data files

Microdata and TableBuilder: Participation, Job Search and Mobility

Data files

Previous catalogue number

This release previously used catalogue number 6226.0* (and 6226.0.55.001 in 2014).

Prior to 2014, statistics were published in:

 

* Note: Catalogue number 6226.0 was previously used for School Leavers, 1970 to 1974: their Employment Status and Education Experience, May 1975.

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