AHRI Quarterly Australian Work Outlook - May 2024
June 2024
This report is the fifth instalment of AHRI’s Quarterly Work Outlook series and draws on responses from over 600 senior HR professionals and organisational decision-makers. This quarter’s report indicates that demand for labour will continue to grow strongly in the second quarter of 2024, while wage expectations have moderated somewhat since the previous report.
The report also takes a closer look at the ongoing high employee turnover rates across Australian workplaces. In particular, the report warns that this is costly for employers and may be an understated factor behind Australia’s sluggish productivity growth; both through vacancies and the time required to train new employees for them to become proficient in their roles.
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 +36 in the June quarter of 2024. While this is strongly positive, it represents the second lowest figure for net employment intentions since the survey began in the June quarter of 2023 and is slightly above the figure recorded in the March 2024 quarter (+33).
2
41% of organisations plan to increase staff levels in the June 2024 quarter, compared with just 5% that plan to reduce the size of their workforce over the same period.
3
Among employers who are currently recruiting, 40% report experiencing recruitment di fficulties, around the same as the previous quarter (38%).
4
Learning has become disconnected from its context, purpose and Almost a quarter (23%) of employers are planning to make workers redundant during the June 2024 quarter, around the same level that was expected for the March 2024 quarter (22%).
5
Recruitment intentions have fallen modestly to 68% for the June 2024 quarter, down from 71% for the March 2024 quarter.
6
The most common employer activities to help tackle recruitment di fficulties are upskilling existing employees (30%), raising wages (23%) and improving benefits (22%).
7
The 12-month average employee turnover rate to the end of March 2024 was 15%, which is one percentage point higher than in the previous report. The employee turnover rate was much higher in the public sector (23%) than in the private sector (13%).
8
Employers reported that the mean basic pay increase in their organisation (excluding bonuses) is expected to be 3% for the 12 months to April 2025, down from 3.7% for the 12 months to January 2025.
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Julie McNamara
Media Specialist, Mahlab
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0419 595 688
