New 'experimental' data shows an increase in people working two jobs

Extract from The Guardian

Australian Bureau of Statistics

Grogonomics

Greg Jericho

New data collected by the Australian Bureau of Statistics will give us clearer information on the changing nature of the labour force

• Greg Jericho is a Guardian Australia columnist

‘One of the best new aspects of the labour account is the ability to differentiate between “main job” and “secondary job” growth.’ Photograph: Scott Barbour/Getty Images

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Thursday 27 July 2017 04.00 AEST Last modified on Thursday 27 July 2017 04.02 AEST

A release of new, experimental, data on the labour sector by the Australian Bureau of Statistics has revealed that in the past five years the percentage of people working two jobs has increased by more than the number of people gaining employment.
Quite often when the monthly labour force figures come out, they are reported as recording the number of jobs rising or falling. But the number of employed persons does not equal jobs.
The biggest reason for the difference is that some people work more than one job. In the labour force figures, all that matters is whether or not you are employed. If last month you had one job and this month you have two, you were classed as “employed” in both months.

If this month however your two jobs meant you worked more than 35 hours a week, you would now be classed as in “full-time employment” – even though you were actually working in two part-time jobs.
The confusion also extends to differences of counting. The labour force figures only count people over the age of 15, whereas a 14 year old working part-time in a shop for example would not be counted.
Similarly while an advertised job is not currently employing anyone, that is a job that is available.
Thus, the total number of jobs in the economy at any one time is a sum of the number of main jobs, the number of secondary jobs (“jobs filled”) and the number of advertised jobs. The employment figures however only count the number of main jobs.
Another problem is that data about jobs comes from businesses, whereas data about employment comes from households – and the two don’t always line up. For example, the labour force survey in June 2016 had 11.9 million people employed, whereas business surveys done by the ABS suggested there were 12.9 million jobs.
The ABS is attempting to reconcile these differences. This week, for the first time, it released a “Labour Account” which attempts to put all the different surveys into some sort of synch.
Currently it is only an annual report, however the chief economist of the ABS, Bruce Hockman, hopes that within a couple years it will be released quarterly – the week after the GDP figures come out.
One of the best new aspects of the labour account is the ability to differentiate between “main job” and “secondary job” growth.
The figures shows that since 2010-11, the number of people employed grew by 6.79%, but the number of jobs filled grew by 6.92%. The reason for the difference is that the number of secondary jobs grew by 9.2%.
The big surge in secondary jobs came in 2014-15 and 2015-16. In those two years the number of people working a second job grew by more than 3.5%:

In those two years, secondary jobs accounted for 10% of the increase in jobs – a figure that saw the percentage of people working at least two jobs rise from 5.9% in 2012-13 to 6.1%:

Now we should not go overboard in decrying this state of affairs. In essence that means there are around 32,000 people working in second jobs than would have been the case if the ratio had stayed the same.
The figures also don’t tell us why those people took a second job – whether their main job reduced hours, or they needed to take a second job because the pay in their main job (which may be part-time as well) was not enough to pay for the rising cost of essentials.

The new data also lets us know which industries have the highest proportion of secondary jobs. Not surprisingly, industries with high proportions of part-time employed have the highest numbers of people working a second job. Just over 16% of people working in the administration and supply industry have a second job.
The biggest disparity between the proportion of secondary jobs and part-time employed is in the retail industry. While it has the second highest number of part-time employees in any industry, there are fewer people working in the retail industry as a second job than is the case across all industries:

Generally there is a good relationship between the growth of main and secondary jobs in each industry, although in the five years to 2015-16 the real estate industry saw a massive jump in people working in the industry as a second job:

In 2010-11, 4.9% of people in the real estate industry were doing it as a second job, by 2015-16 this was up to 6.1%.
The figures also give some new insight into underemployment. Because the new figures look at the amount of hours willing to be worked by both unemployed and those who are already working, we are able to determine the labour supply, not just by numbers of people, but also by the amount of hours.
The data shows that while the percent of total hours available to be worked that were not being worked fell in 2015-16, the share of those hours by underemployed workers grew:

This was off the back of 2014-15 which saw a huge spike in the amount of hours sought by underemployed workers:

In an environment in which there is often much confusion and complaint about the unemployment figures, these newest, experimental figures released by the ABS will serve us well.
In time it will give us more information on the changing nature of our labour force. For now, it appears there has been an increase of people working two jobs but the data relates to events that occurred 12 months ago. In time, hopefully, the data will become more recent, allowing policymakers to respond with more information at hand than they presently have available.