AHRI Quarterly Australian Work Outlook
September 2024
This report is the sixth instalment of AHRI’s Quarterly Work Outlook series and draws on responses from over 600 senior HR professionals and organisational decision-makers. The report suggests that there is ongoing tightness in the Australian labour market despite the slight cooling in some of the key labour market indicators. This has important implications for HR professionals who might be expecting an imminent easing of recruitment and retention pressures, and reinforces the imperative for HR professionals and employers to engage, reward and retain employees. Meanwhile, pay expectations for the following 12 months have risen to 3.8% since the previous quarter. This is the highest figure for wage intentions recorded in any of our six Australian Work Outlook surveys published to date.
Key Insights
1
The AHRI Net Employment Intentions Index, which measures the difference between the proportion of employers that expect to increase staff levels and those that expect to decrease staff levels rose to +41 in the September quarter of 2024. This represents the joint second highest figure for net employment intentions since the survey began in the June quarter of 2023.
2
45% of organisations intend to increase staff levels in the September 2024 quarter, compared with just 3% that anticipate reducing the size of their workforce over the same period.
3
68% of organisations plan to hire staff in the September quarter of 2024, unchanged from the June 2024 quarter.
4
More than a quarter (27%) of employers plan to make redundancies this quarter, up from 23% in the June quarter.
5
The share of organisations experiencing recruitment difficulties has remained flat at 39% in the September quarter, around the same level as in the June quarter (40%).
6
The 12-month average employee turnover to the end of June 2024 was 15%, unchanged from the previous quarterly report. Employee turnover was higher in the public sector (19%) than in the private sector (15%) during this period.
7
Employers reported that the mean basic pay increase in their organisation (excluding bonuses) is expected to be 3.8% for the 12 months to July 2025, up from 3% for the 12 months to April 2025. This is the highest figure for wage intentions recorded in any of our six Australian Work Outlook surveys published to date.
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Julie McNamara
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