AFTER the Delta variant pushed an 8.4% hike, more than 40% of employed Australians were working from home in the first half of August.
According to the latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, August saw significant gains to remote working, with 40.6% of those employed doing so from home, compared to just 32.2% in August 2019.
“Prior to the pandemic, the percentage of employed people working from home on a regular basis had been steadily increasing by around a percentage point every two years,” said Bjorn Jarvis, head of labour statistics at the ABS.
Remote working was most easily observed in managers and professionals, 64% of whom were working from home, while this figure was at just 25% across all other occupations.
“Interestingly, while the pandemic has seen a large shift in people working from home, there haven’t been similarly large changes in other working arrangements such as working Monday to Friday only. Working arrangements other than working from home have generally followed pre-pandemic trends,” said Jarvis.
Other working arrangements saw only minor changes over the two years, with 52.4% working only Monday to Friday, up from 50.9% in 2019, while arrangements for flexible hours were up only 1.5% to 35.6%.
Meanwhile, usually working shift work was down from 15.6% in 2019 to 14.8% in August this year, likewise usually working extra hours or overtime was down from 34.1% to 33.9%, though being usually required to be on call or standby was up from 22% to 22.5%.
Lockdowns and other restrictions also saw fewer lower paid workers in August compared to pre-pandemic, with these workers and their employment status particularly impacted.
“In August 2021, the number of employed people who were earning less than $1,000 per week fell by almost half a million compared to pre-pandemic levels, from 4.5 million in August 2019 to just over 4 million in 2021,” said Jarvis.
On the other end of this, employees earning $1000 or more per week increased over the same period, climbing by 8%. Though this is reasonably below the typical two year rate of growth.
As of August there were also 2.4 million casual employees, or 22.5% of all employees, down from 23.6% in May and 24.1% in February just prior to the pandemic onset.
Additionally, 90% of employees earning a median wage of $1200 per week or more were entitled to paid sick or holiday lease, with more than 50% also having access to paid parental leave.
“For workers in the lowest 25 per cent of earners (less than $750 per week), 40 per cent had access to paid sick leave or paid holiday leave, and 20 per cent were entitled to paid parental leave,” added Jarvis.
