It’s a lifestyle that helps sell the Gold Coast - flexible, relaxed, sun-drenched - but dig into the data and a more complex picture begins to emerge.

The Gold Coast is in the grip of a long-term shift - Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show - away from traditional full-time work, with part-time and flexible arrangements now accounting for more than a third of the city’s workforce, at 33.80 per cent. It’s a marked increase from just under 30 per cent - 29.8 to be exact - nearly 25 years ago.

Over that same period, full-time workers have gone from averaging 42.7 hours a week to 39.6, a fall of almost eight per cent, while part-time employees are clocking more hours than ever. Part-timers are doing 18.5 hours per person a week, up from 17.4 hours in 1999. That is working roughly 50 more hours a year now than they did over 25 years ago.

On the surface, it suggests a post-pandemic workforce recalibrating for balance, wellbeing and flexibility. But some experts warn the city is becoming a revolving door for talent - attracting people for the lifestyle, but losing them to better-paying cities with deeper job markets and more robust career pathways.

Gold Coasters ‘don’t want to be stuck in an office for 70 hours a week’

Bond University organisational behaviour and future of work expert Dr Libby Sander said the trend was partly fuelled by a generational workforce rethink.

She said ‘Gen Z’ and ‘Gen Alpha’ were opting for “portfolio careers” - a mix of side hustles, freelancing, and casual contracts - in favour of the traditional 9-5.

“A lot of younger workers saw what happened with their parents in the GFC and that there wasn’t any loyalty from organisations,” she said. “They might’ve worked for many years and really really long hours and it really didn’t sort of count for anything.

“That’s one factor - they’ve decided, I don’t really want to go down that path, so people have changed their definition of success and ambition in terms of work,” she said.

Dr Sander said since the pandemic, it had also become a lifestyle factor.

“We’ve seen the rise in the digital nomad economy,” she said.

“In some cases people are taking more than one part-time job in order to meet rising costs but a lot of people are thinking about mental health, physical health, lifestyle and wanting more flexibility.”

The Gold Coast will be Australia’s fastest-growing city leading into the 2032 Olympics – outpacing the rest of Queensland – as it rides a youth population influx, a report revealed last month.

“We’ve seen a huge number of people moving here since the pandemic and continuing to do so. (The Gold Coast) tends to be quite a transient place where people might be coming to do part-time work or study, perhaps to have a more relaxed lifestyle.

“It certainly makes sense people coming to work here would be choosing lifestyle over a city like Sydney or Melbourne where the expectation of a much more intense work culture exists.

“If you’re coming to the Gold Coast, you don’t want to be stuck in an office for 70 hours a week, you’re going to want to be at the beach.”

A city of side hustlers

It’s a shift 19-year-old Summer Welch has fully embraced.

The Broadbeach local works as a Pilates instructor, dancer and Titans cheerleader - while studying full-time to become a teacher.

“No two days look the same,” she said. “I love having that free range in between jobs.”

Welch said she usually works 15 to 20 hours a week, depending on game days and performances.

“I might start my day teaching Pilates, then from say 11am–2pm I’ll either go for a walk, grab some lunch, or go to the beach if I feel like it - or I’ll study at the beach and get some uni done, then it’s back to work in the afternoon.”

She said she grew up watching her parents work full-time and feels lucky to be carving her own path.

“I feel like once you get into a 9–5 job you get stuck there and then you just keep on doing the same thing over and over again - and being in your 20s, you want to live your best life, and you can’t do that if you’re stuck.”

“Sydney and Melbourne taking our top talent”

Griffith University Business School senior lecturer Dr Carys Chan said the city’s economy reinforced the shift toward casualisation.

“We’re not a financial or cultural capital like Sydney or Melbourne, we’re tourism and lifestyle-driven. That means more casualised industries like retail and hospitality dominate our workforce by nature,” she said.

Dr Sanders said while offering more flexibility, this trend risked fuelling a long-term talent leak.

“We’ve got a lot of people moving here for lifestyle and retirement but then we’re losing some of this intellectual capital to Sydney and Melbourne because they offer wider range of jobs and long-term opportunities,” Dr Sander said.

“We see this happening on the Gold Coast and certainly other places around the world of that brain drain - of losing our good talent because we don’t have those higher level full-time or more senior roles to offer people more serious career paths when they finish school or university.

“It’s definitely an issue.

“There’s a huge number of Gold Coasters who commute everyday to Brisbane for work and I’m sure, given the preference, they would much rather have the role on the Gold Coast.”

She said the brain drain would pose an issue attracting big corporates - with recent calls for tech giants to look at the city. 

“The reason why that may not happen is because the lack or shortage of talent.

“That’s going to be an impact in terms of attracting big businesses to the Gold Coast which is something that is certainly desired from an economic development perspective.”

Economic impact and dip in productivity

While flexibility is a drawcard, Dr Chan said the rise in casual work could have long-term consequences.

“The casual and gig workers also often don’t have entitlements like paid leave, superannuation and job security,” she said. “So for the long-term financial well-being and retirement planning – that would be a lot more difficult.”

She also warned of a potential drop in output.

“We will see a dip in productivity, by nature of dedicating less time to work and having fewer people working.”

But she said it was not all downside.

“Full-time in terms of cost to the organisation might be a lot higher because you have to pay sick or annual leave,” she said. “So from that perspective they might hire more people.”

She said the focus now should be on how to better support casual workers to stay engaged over the long-term.

“It’s also a good opportunity to attract and retain talent because generally speaking the younger the generation, there’s more appetite of not just dedicating work to full-time.

“That could be a positive shift – if you work things out in the long-term, productivity can also increase by engaging the casual and part-time workers.”

Dr Sander said businesses must respond to the changing landscape or risk falling behind.

“The organisations that are going to succeed in the future are going to be the ones that are able to retain this declining pool of talent.”

Crisis or opportunity?

Dr Chan said it was also time to broaden the city’s workforce strategy beyond tourism and retail.

“It’s time they enhance some of the other core industries as well,” she said.

“It’s very essential to continue to train the workforce to upskill in some of the hot spaces like artificial intelligence, cyber security – because all these roles could also be done part-time and remotely.”

She believes the city’s reputation is an untapped advantage.

“The Gold Coast as a regional hub is still fairly competitive with other regional hubs - it’s still one of the more vibrant and more attractive ones because they also have an international airport and as a lifestyle destination it attracts a lot more tourists,” she said.

“But domestically people still view Gold Coast as more of a lifestyle hub and not so much as a knowledge hub or an education hub.

“With the influx of people coming in and so many tourists visiting Gold Coast annually — domestic and internationally - it really has that potential to be a creative, knowledge or education hub.”

Dr Sander said the key would be matching lifestyle appeal with long-term economic development.

“We’ve got to be able to attract more companies and provide more options,” he said.

“There’s advantages for the Gold Coast because we’ve got the opportunity to say ‘hey, this is a beautiful place to live - you’ve got those lifestyle factors and so people want to live here - we know that.

“If we can marry that up with corporate saying there’s a good pool of talent here of people who are committed to staying here who love the lifestyle - there’s an opportunity for us to position ourselves as a destination where people want to live and if there are good career options that will help us attract more people to the region.”

Editor’s note: The Bulletin acknowledges the Future Gold Coast sponsors for supporting this important series and notes sponsors have no control over the content or views expressed.