Job Mobility Continues To Decline Into 2025: Australia

The job mobility rate has fallen for the second year in a row, according to new data released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

Sean Crick, ABS head of labour statistics, said: 'Just under 8 per cent of employed people, or 1.1 million people, changed their employer or business in the year to February 2025. This was a small decrease from the year to February 2024.

'This follows a rise in job mobility over the COVID period, where the job mobility rate increased to 9.6 per cent in February 2023.'

The job mobility rate for employees was almost 9 per cent, compared with less than 3 per cent for self-employed people.

Job mobility tends to decrease with age, with people aged 15 to 24 having the highest job mobility rate at around 12 per cent. In contrast, for workers aged 65 years and over it was 1 per cent.

The Australian Capital Territory continues to have the highest job mobility rate, with 11 per cent of workers changing jobs, followed by Queensland (9 per cent).

Sales Workers (9.9 per cent) and Community and Personal Workers (9.5 per cent) were the most job mobile occupations.

'Of the 1.1 million people who changed jobs during the year to February 2025, almost two-thirds (62 per cent) remained in the same occupation,' Mr Crick said.

'Professionals were more likely than other occupations to stay in the same occupation, with over four-fifths (82 per cent) of Professionals who changed jobs remaining in the Professionals occupation group. In contrast, only around half of Sales workers who changed jobs stayed as Sales workers.'

Job Mobility data is sourced from the annual Participation, Job Search and Mobility survey. Additional data from this survey was also released today in Underemployed Workers and Potential Workers. These releases provide further insights into job search; workforce participation; underemployment; potential workers and job attachment.