The majority of casual employees prefer to work in casual employment, according to new data released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

David Taylor, ABS head of labour statistics, said, “Three-quarters of casual employees currently prefer casual employment, with the flexibility in hours the main reason for over half of these people. The higher hourly pay rate was the main reason for almost a quarter of people preferring casual employment.”

“For the one-quarter of casual employees who would prefer a non-casual job, the most common reasons were to have paid leave entitlements or have more secure employment.”.

There were over 2.5 million employees without paid holiday or sick leave entitlements – a commonly used measure of casual workers – in August 2024. This represents 22 per cent of all employees (and 18 per cent of all employed people).

“Casual employment was particularly impacted by the pandemic, falling from around 25 per cent of employees to under 21 per cent in 2020. While the share of casual employees subsequently rose to almost 24 per cent between 2020 and 2022, it has since dropped to just over 22 per cent of all employees in August 2024.” Mr Taylor said.

Working from home

Working from home is still more common among Australians after the pandemic, but slightly less than it was a year ago.

“Our latest data, for August 2024, shows that 36 per cent of Australians usually work from home. While this was slightly down from 37 per cent in 2023, it was still four percentage points above the pre-pandemic level. This shows that many of the changes in working arrangements have continued beyond the pandemic.” Mr Taylor said.

The main reasons people usually worked from home was to work more flexibly or choose their own hours, followed by operating a business from home or having a home-based job.

Further details can be found in Working arrangements.

Employee earnings

Half of all employees earned at least $1,396 a week in their main job in August 2024. This was an extra $96 a week, or 7.4 per cent more than in August 2023. Median hourly earnings were $40.00, up from $39.70 in August 2023.

Median weekly earnings were around $1,700 for full-time employees, and $691 for part-time employees.

The occupation groups with highest median weekly earnings were Managers ($2,100 per week) and Professionals ($1,827). The lowest were Sales workers ($714) and Labourers ($900).

Further details can be found in Employee earnings.

Trade union membership

The number of trade union members rose by 175,800 to 1.6 million employees between August 2022 and August 2024. The trade union membership rate was 13.1 per cent of all employees in August 2024, compared with 12.5 per cent in August 2022 and 16.3 per cent 10 years ago.

Further details can be found in Trade union membership.