The number of Australians who need more than one job to make ends meet - which had already been at a record high - has climbed even higher according to new data released this morning by the ABS.
The number of secondary jobs now sits at 954,000, up from the previous all-time record, 926,000 set in June 2021 and an increase of 11.5 per cent in a single quarter. There are 867,000 people working more than one job, also a new record.
Most working people do not take multiple jobs by choice. This is a clear illustration of the toll that insecure work is taking on Australian workers. People who work more than one job earn less on average than workers who can rely on a single job.
The Morrison Government has missed an opportunity to use the recovery from the pandemic to make the Australian workforce fairer, with more secure employment and fewer working people forced to work insecure or multiple insecure jobs. The majority of jobs created since 2020 have been casual, part-time, short-term contracts, or otherwise insecure.
Quotes attributable to ACTU Secretary Sally McManus:
"Working people are struggling to keep up with the cost of living, and this new record shows how desperate the situation is becoming for hundreds of thousands of Australians.
"The biggest increases in multiple jobs have come in healthcare and social assistance, education and training and accommodation and food services. These are frontline workers who are facing a cost of living crisis caused by low pay and have been abandoned by the Morrison Government.
"Working people should not need to have more than one job just to get by. The Morrison Government has the power to ensure that workers have secure jobs that they can rely on, but instead has sided with employers to make work even more insecure for millions of Australians.
"This new record shows how hollow the Morrison Government's recovery has been - nearly a million working Australians need to take second, third, even fourth jobs to pay their bills.
"When the Morrison Government talks about how many jobs have been created, they never mention that these are insecure jobs being taken up by people already in other insecure jobs."
