Australia’s unemployment rate held at 4.1% in January. But Deputy CFO Emma Seymour says the number that matters for shift workers tells a very different story.
What’s happening: Australia’s unemployment rate held at 4.1% in January 2026, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, with employment rising to 14.7 million people.
Why this matters: The ABS underemployment rate, at 5.9%, captures some of this, but industry-level hour reductions may not fully surface in headline figures.
Australia’s labour market started 2026 looking stable on paper. The unemployment rate held at 4.1% in January, and the number of employed Australians rose to 14,705,800, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Full-time employment increased by 50,500 in seasonally adjusted terms, and monthly hours worked across all jobs climbed to 2,013 million.
But for people working shifts, the picture inside those numbers is more complicated.
Steady rate, softer hours
Emma Seymour, CFO at Deputy, a shift work management platform, says the headline unemployment figure is not the most useful measure for understanding how shift workers are actually faring right now.
“Unemployment holding at 4.1% sounds stable,” she says. “But for shift workers, the more important number right now is hours, not headcount.”
Deputy’s own data shows average shift hours per active employee fell from 70.6 hours to 65.15 hours between October and January. That is nearly an 8% reduction in paid work per person over just three months.
Income tied to the roster
The significance of that figure goes beyond statistics. In shift-based industries, there is no salary buffer absorbing the shortfall.
“In shift-based industries, income is directly tied to hours worked,” Seymour says. “There is no salary buffer. So when hours soften, earnings soften. Someone can still be counted as employed in the national data, but if they are getting five fewer hours a week, that is meaningful. That impacts rent, groceries or fuel.”
The ABS data does capture some of this through the underemployment rate, which held at 5.9% in trend terms in January. But Seymour points to a layer of pressure that sits below the headline measures.
This concern is not new. Deputy’s 2023 research published by Dynamic Business found that 7% of the shift workforce held multiple jobs simultaneously, a level exceeding figures seen in both the United States and the United Kingdom, driven largely by cost of living pressures and a need for income stability.
Caution before cuts
What Seymour is observing now is a different, but related, dynamic: employers pulling back on hours as a first response to economic uncertainty, before making decisions about headcount.
“What we are seeing is a market adjusting cautiously,” she says. “Businesses are trimming hours before they trim roles. That is rational from an employer perspective, but it creates a layer of underemployment that does not show up in the headline unemployment rate.”
The ABS data reflects broader softness in hours availability. The underemployment rate in seasonally adjusted terms edged up to 5.9% in January, compared to 5.7% the previous month.
Predictability as productivity
For employers, Seymour argues the data points to a practical management consideration, not just a welfare concern.
“So the labour market is not just tight, it is tight and uneven,” she says. “For employers, this makes roster transparency and fair allocation of hours critical. When workers have confidence in their income and schedules, engagement improves, absenteeism falls, and performance stabilises. In a market like this, predictability is not just good for people; it is a lever for productivity.”
The ABS will release the next Labour Force Survey results in March 2026, which will indicate whether the softening in shift hours seen over the summer period is a seasonal adjustment or the start of a more sustained trend.
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