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Episode 172 - What is job hugging?
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RNA episode 172 has news for 4 August 2026 covering job mobility dropping to a near-record low as Australians sit tight in their roles, major NSW Industrial Court ruling that leaves labour hire firms rethinking how they view the transition of workers. SustainRecruit alumni launching a new boutique agency, Liminal Recruitment, alongside a deep dive into fresh ATO income data revealing which jobs have booming earnings and which are on the slide. Question of the Week is, "What is job hugging?"
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Transcript
Introduction to Wingman Recruitment
00:00:07
Speaker
Do you know who helps recruitment agencies recruit Adele? It's Wingman Recruitment. Flexible recruitment support built by recruiters for recruiters. More capacity, less pressure, better results. Learn more at wingmangroup.com.au and visit the services tab.
News Segment Introduction
00:00:23
Speaker
Welcome to Recruitment News Australia. This is the news for the 4th of August 2026. I'm Ross Klenit. And I'm Adele Last.
Industrial Court Ruling Against Allstaff
00:00:32
Speaker
We've got a ruling out of the Industrial Court of New South Wales this month that every labour hire operator needs to pay attention to Very closely, i would say, Adele. The details are important.
00:00:46
Speaker
Labor hire firm Allstaff was supplying storemen and pickpackers to Woolworth sites at Minchinbury and Unora in New South Wales. When Allstaff lost those two contracts back in July 2023, the workers were told to reapply for their jobs through the incoming providers, ADECO at Minchinbury and Chanda McLeod at Unora.
00:01:06
Speaker
What Allstaff had not reckoned with was the issue of long service leave, or more specifically, the United Workers' Union taking up the case Of the 13 former on-hire employees, nine of them with more than a decade of continuous service.
00:01:22
Speaker
The court agreed with the union's position and found that all staff had breached the Long Service Leave Act. All staff argued two specific defences, which were both knocked back.
00:01:32
Speaker
First, they argued the 25% casual loading, specifically a payslip wording added in 2022 saying that loading covered leave entitlements already took care of long service leave.
00:01:44
Speaker
They lost on that count as the Act specifically prohibits contracting out of that entitlement. And the court's reasoning was pretty simple. You can't take a payment that was made for one purpose, the casual loading, and retroactively decide it covers something else entirely. Changing the words on a payslip doesn't rewrite history.
00:02:04
Speaker
What was the second offence? that the liability had transferred to the new providers, in other words, Edeco and Chandler McLeod, under a transmission of business, which the court found just wasn't what happened. No assets changed hands. Nothing was transferred. It was just an administrative changeover from one supplier to the next.
00:02:25
Speaker
So that defence fell over too. So where does this leave all staff? liable for the long service leave payments to all 13 workers. What's left is working out compensation of costs. But based on current award minimums, all staff will be up for a minimum of, I'd say, around $100,000 for the 13 workers, potentially more. And if costs get awarded on top, the bill could potentially double.
00:02:51
Speaker
The takeaway for the wider labour hire sector seems to be you can't assume that losing a client contract wipes out your accrued leave liabilities. Those follow the employee, not the site. And you can't paper over an entitlement by changing the wording on a payslip. If the leave has accrued, it's owed.
00:03:09
Speaker
Full stop.
Liminal Recruitment Launch
00:03:15
Speaker
Mike Clements and Morgan Fletcher have left Sustain Recruit to launch their own agency, Liminal Recruitment. I saw the announcement on LinkedIn last month, Adele. I like the name.
00:03:27
Speaker
Co-founder said it comes from the threshold concept, that space between where you are and where you're trying to get to. Makes sense, given that they specialize in product and design talent, UX, service design, product management, that sort of thing. Career transitions are basically the whole business.
00:03:45
Speaker
Both of them have similar backgrounds too. Fletcher's originally from the UK and has been recruiting in Australia since 2020. Most recently as Associate Director at Sustain Recruit. Clemens is UK born as well. He moved out with Michael Page from London about 10 years ago. a Bit of a winding path after that though. Stins had Indeed, then Allura Partners before landing at Sustain Recruit in early 2022 where he's subsequently become an Associate Director And that happened at the end of 2023. So um they were peers before deciding to strike out together.
00:04:17
Speaker
Sydney's product and design recruitment market is fairly niche. It'll be interesting to see how Liminal carves out space against the bigger players. We wish Mike and Morgan the best of luck.
Fair Work Commission's Ruling on Hero Corporation
00:04:32
Speaker
Adele, there's a Fair Work Commission ruling this month that's got recruiters and HR teams around the country double-checking their fixed-term contracts. The Hero Corporation case, I saw that. A designer started at the marketing agency in April 2025 on what was meant to be a three-week contract, which was extended three times. By the time it wrapped up, seven months later in late November, he'd worked on 44 projects for different clients.
00:05:02
Speaker
That doesn't sound like a short-term specific task kind of role. Exactly what Fair Work thought. The hiring manager told the designer in mid-November that his contract wouldn't be renewed and his last day was the 28th. Hero's position was simple. The contract just reached its end date, nothing more.
00:05:21
Speaker
But the commission didn't buy that. It found the sequence of events amounted to a dismissal, not a natural contract expiry. Under the Secure Jobs Better Pay reforms, employers are generally limited to two consecutive fixed-term contracts or two years total for the same role.
00:05:38
Speaker
Which hero had blown well past, Fair Work decided that end-date clause didn't hold up under the new rules. The whole thing got reclassified as a termination at the employer's initiative.
00:05:50
Speaker
Although the agency attempted to argue an exception by saying his work was speculative pitch design, building assets and using AI image generation to help convert unpaid pitches into paid business and claim that counted as a distinct task requiring specialised skills.
00:06:06
Speaker
The FWC rejected that argument. And rejected it pretty firmly. The reasoning was that specialised skills has to mean something the employer doesn't already have in-house. Since Hero openly admitted this kind of pitch work is business as usual for them, it couldn't be treated as some one-off specialist task.
00:06:25
Speaker
So spreading someone across 44 projects for two dozen clients worked against them, not for them, and the breadth of his involvement undercut the narrow identifiable task argument.
00:06:37
Speaker
It wasn't a complete win for the employee, though, as this was purely a jurisdictional ruling, as Hero was attempting to argue that the FWC had no authority to even hear the case. The actual general protections matter on whether the dismissal itself was unlawful now moves to a private conference.
00:06:56
Speaker
Regardless, this ruling signals how the FWC will read fixed-term contract extensions under the new rules, so employers relying on rolling short-term contracts should take note.
Trends in Income Across Professions
00:07:09
Speaker
Last month, news site Crikey published a fascinating piece on the most recent data dump from the ATO, which aggregates and then averages taxable income by job. This allows you to see exactly how much each job earns and how that's changed over time.
00:07:26
Speaker
Tell me more, Ross. What period does this data cover? It's FY 2024 taxation stats compared against FY 2022. So straddling that stretch where inflation hit 7.8% December 2022 and the ah RBA was hiking rates to wrestle it back down.
00:07:44
Speaker
The data covers total earnings, including overtime and bonuses. So it's not about salary or hourly rate. So who's up and who's down? Among the big occupations, in other words, over 20,000 tax returns, real estate agents got hit hardest, 5% less taxable income. 2021-22 was the property market peak, 23-24 was the slump, so commissions plunged.
00:08:13
Speaker
And on the happier end? Barbers, weirdly, up 20%, which I see in my local shopping centre these days. Two years ago, there wasn't a barber shop anywhere, now there are two.
00:08:25
Speaker
Fitness instructors experienced the second highest income bump at 18.5%, with aged care nurses coming in at 17.4%, ranked third.
00:08:38
Speaker
And what about smaller occupations outside of that top 20,000 list? That's where it gets more pointed. Lists of both the highest percentage pay rises and biggest dollar pay rises included both cricketers and a variety of specialist doctors.
00:08:54
Speaker
Cricketers, Ross? Yes. Average taxable income rose $86,400 or 37.4%. I think that will be due to the rise of 2020 tournaments around the world, which give players the opportunity to earn an income 12 months of the year, as well as women cricketers receiving a big pay rise in base contracts from Cricket Australia, which has flowed through to state contracts. Star batter Elise Perry is speculated to earn around a million dollars a year.
00:09:23
Speaker
Any other interesting results? Escorts reported an average of 203% more taxable income between 2022 and 2024. Care workers were up 106% and childcare workers were up 63%.
00:09:38
Speaker
Clearly, the demand for hands-on professions is climbing rapidly, although I suspect those figures are largely driven by an increase in average hours worked. Bungee jump masters saw a 39% rise in earnings and Krupias' earnings were up 26%.
00:09:56
Speaker
So this data shows us what matters for earning is supply and demand in specific labour markets.
Decreasing Job Mobility in Australia
00:10:02
Speaker
If your skills are scarce, your wage can run way ahead of inflation no matter what the CPI headline says.
00:10:09
Speaker
It's like a lot of economic reporting lately. The aggregate numbers flatten out a story that's actually about quite different results in specific areas and niches. Some workers have genuinely never had it better. They're just not the ones making the noise about it.
00:10:28
Speaker
Question of the week. What is job hugging? Well, perhaps we can explain it with ABS numbers that came out recently, Ross. The data seems to contradict the perception that workers jumping around is much worse in recent years compared to a decade or two ago.
00:10:46
Speaker
Seems so, Adele. Data shows that job mobility or job hugging, if you prefer, in Australia dropped more. to 7.2% for the year to February 2026, down from 7.7% the year before. That is a pretty sharp drop, half a percentage point just 12 months.
00:11:07
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And in real terms, that means just over a million people switched jobs or employers over the year. It sounds like a lot, but historically, it's actually on the low side.
00:11:19
Speaker
Yeah, this data confirms that job hugging, to use the phrase jour, people sitting tight instead of jumping ship, is actually describing reality accurately.
00:11:30
Speaker
So much so, it's become buzzword this year, hasn't it? Yeah, it seems like every second ah HR newsletter seems to be talking about it. But it does make sense, really, given how uncertain the economy's felt lately.
00:11:45
Speaker
I mean, it is very competitive out there for anyone actually job hunting. I mean, as the SEEK job application data showed that we reported in Recruitment News Australia last week, it's now at a record high.
00:11:58
Speaker
If you're not sure there's something better waiting on the other side, why take the risk? Yeah, and here's a bit that I found interesting with it. The ABS's head of labour statistics pointed out this isn't actually a new phenomenon.
00:12:12
Speaker
It's part of a much longer trend going back as far as the 1970s, if you believe. Apparently, mobility only spikes when there's a serious economic turmoil. So think the early 80s recession, the early 90s recession, and then obviously with COVID.
00:12:30
Speaker
So it's almost a shock indicator more than anything else. When something genuinely disruptive happens, workers get pushed or pulled into moving. Otherwise, the default setting is just to stay put.
Factors Influencing Job Mobility
00:12:41
Speaker
It actually really tells you something about human nature, more honestly, I suppose, that you know change is really uncomfortable. We know that. Most people need a pretty strong reason to go ahead and disrupt their own life.
00:12:54
Speaker
For sure. Now, let's dig into the data. What stood out to me most is the release by age breakdown. It is quite stark. Predictably, and as everyone would expect, younger workers, those the ABS classifies as 15 to 24, are still far more likely to move around than any other age cohort. So 12% this year, and that's um up slightly from 11.5% the year before So bucking the overall trend.
00:13:26
Speaker
It's pretty interesting though that that group specifically went up when everyone else had pulled back. Yeah, especially how dramatically it changes after that.
00:13:36
Speaker
So from 12% for the 15 to 24-year-olds, plummets to 8.1% for 25 to 44-year-olds then only 4.6% for the 45 to 64-year-old age bracket
00:13:45
Speaker
forty four year olds and then only four point six percent for the forty five to sixty four year old age bracket and then plummets again to just 1.2% for anyone over 65. So basically, the older do you get, the more likely you are to stick around.
00:14:05
Speaker
It sort of makes sense when you think about it from like a life stage perspective. Younger workers have less to lose. You know, they're not necessarily supporting a mortgage or a family yet. And job hopping early in your career is often how you grow your skills and often your salary at times too.
00:14:22
Speaker
Whereas by your mid-40s and beyond, you've probably built up some seniority, maybe some entitlements, a network within your organisation, all the things that you'd be you know hard-pressed to walk away from if you make a move. Yeah, and again, probably consistent with the stereotype, older workers probably value stability more generally, especially when things feel shaky economically.
00:14:47
Speaker
You're less inclined to gamble when you really need the income supporting a mortgage or maybe a second mortgage or school fees or something like that, or just simply being closer to retirement when you know it's just going to be harder to get a job when you're a lot older.
00:15:05
Speaker
I believe there was also a gender gap in the data too, which I thought was worth flagging. Men had a slightly higher mobility rate, 7.4% versus for women. It's not a massive gap ah on its own, i suppose. Yeah, pretty close.
00:15:22
Speaker
sort of dug into that a bit. and And here's what I found fascinating. Women's mobility fell more sharply year on year. It was down 0.8 of a percentage point, whereas men's was a quarter of that, just 0.2 of a percentage point down for men.
00:15:39
Speaker
So the two groups were closer together the year before, and now the gaps widened because women pulled back on switching jobs more than men did? Exactly. so I'd be interested to know Like, what is driving that? Is a industry mix or caring responsibilities, risk appetite, women in more vulnerable ah jobs? um You know, data doesn't tell us the why, just the what.
00:16:06
Speaker
i mean, that is often frustrating with these sorts of releases. You get a headline number and then really speculating on the causes. And geographically, there were some pretty big differences across the states and territories too, Ross. The Northern Territory led the pack at 11.1%, and then Queensland and South Australia were sitting at around 8.2%. And what about at the other end? Well, New South Wales was at the bottom with just 6.5%.
00:16:35
Speaker
Wow, okay. So that's a pretty big spread. New South Wales, almost half that of the Northern Territory. um So is that industry mix or maybe resources sector churn in the Territory? Or is it the monsoon season makes people crazy and sort of itinerant workers get out of the top end? Or is it?
00:17:03
Speaker
Generally, a more settled workforce in New South Wales because of climate. It's probably a bit of both, I suppose. Smaller transient workforces in places like Northern Territory are always going to sort of skew those numbers higher, I think.
00:17:16
Speaker
Okay. So what about people who just left jobs altogether without anything to go to? they They didn't just switch? Because I think it did cover retrenchments in this release, didn't it?
00:17:28
Speaker
Yeah, so this is a slightly different measure though. About 2.1 million people left or lost their jobs over the past year, which is roughly steady with the year before. So there wasn't much movement in that number. Okay, and what were the reasons behind that? Nearly a quarter of leavers said that they were chasing a better opportunity or just wanted a change. So that's the voluntary side of things, people making that obvious choice themselves.
00:17:52
Speaker
And the involuntary side when the employee didn't make the decision to leave? Well, that's about 12.5% of leavers, roughly 258,000 people according to the data, ah said they'd been retrenched. That gives a retrenchment rate of 1.8%. So, it's actually slightly down from the prior year.
00:18:14
Speaker
Yeah, still um quite significantly above the record low of 1.3% back in 2023, when of course the labour market was quite different, ah but nowhere near the peak of 7.2% from 1991, the recession that we had to have. And I remember that very clearly because I'd been in the UK for nearly two years, came back, 1991 the first year as an agency recruiter in Australia and I was working in Sydney and I think I'm right in saying I think the unemployment rate, the national unemployment rate peaked at 10.8% that year. It's bit eye-watering, isn't it? um It's definitely elevated but it's nowhere near close to kind of recession-era territory.
Cautious Workforce Amid Economic Uncertainty
00:18:57
Speaker
Yeah, and, you know, okay, I've got some war stories here but really it is a good reminder of just how bad 1998 One actually was because, let's face it, most of the listeners to this podcast were probably still at school or maybe youre not born then.
00:19:14
Speaker
and So, you know, a 7.2% retrenchment rate, it's an entirely different economic world to what we're in now. So, if we pull all this together, Ross, people are staying put more than they have in years, especially older workers, even as the retrenchment rate stays fairly modest by historical standards.
00:19:36
Speaker
yeah ah Yeah, I'd say that's right. I mean, it's painting a picture of a workforce that's cautious more than complacent. People aren't necessarily happy sitting still. They're just weighing up the risk of moving against all that uncertainty out there. And you know for now, staying is winning.
00:19:53
Speaker
i mean, personal example, a friend of mine I just spoke to today, in fact, she's working at KPMG who, as most people know, is in crisis mode. There's She's rumoured to be up to 1,000 people in Australia. And she's only been there a couple of years, and now she she really wants to get out.
00:20:16
Speaker
But, of course, at the moment, given she's so towards the older end of the spectrum, it's tougher for her, and she's not just going to leave without a job to go to. She's staying put, but she really would prefer to be in a different job with a different employer.
00:20:33
Speaker
I've got another example as well of someone I know whose job hugging, as we we're terming it, actually ah prepping to start his own business though. So he won't move till everything's set up, ah but he's definitely planned to leave as employer. I guess he's just waiting, sitting tight, waiting for the timing to be right.
00:20:50
Speaker
Yeah, it's like a classic example. i think people just are going to be a bit more cautious, particularly moving from employment into self-employment. And look, I'm i'm sure many of our listeners are thinking immediately of examples that they know of, whether it's are candidates they know or even clients they know and probably their personal network as well.
00:21:10
Speaker
It'll be interesting to see whether this job-hugging mentality holds or whether we start to see it loosen up once again. when the economic conditions look a bit brighter and job seeker confidence returns.