Your job is more secure than ever

Right now, your boss needs you more than you need them.

Art: Emilia Tortorella

Right now, your boss needs you more than you need them.

The unemployment rate in Australia has dropped to record lows, leaving employees with the most bargaining power they've had in years.

About 88,000 jobs were added to the economy in June, leaving the unemployment rate at a very low 3.5%, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

That is the smallest portion of our population without employment since August 1974.

“The large fall in the unemployment rate this month reflects more people than usual entering employment and also lower than usual numbers of employed people becoming unemployed,” ABS Head of Labour statistics Bjorn Jarvis said. 

“Together, these flows reflect an increasingly tight labour market, with high demand for engaging and retaining workers, as well as ongoing labour shortages.”

The low levels of unemployment are due to a unique concoction of massive amounts of government hand-outs, closed international borders (so more Australians are taking up the jobs that migrants otherwise might) and a widely-vaccinated population.

Even with so many Australians in full time work, the nation is still facing worker shortages (still!).

Australia is still experiencing major worker shortages as a hangover from Covid-19 and the international border being closed to migrant workers for so long. 

When you’ve got a high employment rate and consistent worker shortages, employers become more desperate to retain staff, economist Richard Holden told The Oz.

So, the employees hold the power. 

“It definitely means you’ve got more bargaining power than you may have thought,” Holden said. 

“If you’ve got a tonne of people looking for work, then the employer can be picky. But, in this case, you’ve got tons of employers looking for people, so the employee can be more picky.” 

Keep in mind that this coincides with the 2021-2022 End of Financial Year. So, perhaps it's the right time to ask for a raise. 

The underemployment rate (which measures people who didn't work as much as they'd like to) increased to 6.1%. For young people, it rose to 13.9%.

The number of hours worked across the economy eased due to the great number of employees taking time off due to illness.

“In line with large numbers of Covid-19 cases in June, the number of people working reduced hours due to illness continued to be high. This reflected ongoing disruption associated with the Omicron variant and cases of influenza,” Jarvis said.

“There was around 780,000 people working fewer hours than usual due to own illness in June 2022, almost double the usual number we see at the start of winter.”