Fifty years ago work was different, wasn't it? Your first job on leaving school was at the bottom of the hierarchy – filing, making coffee or cleaning up the building site. If all went well you would move through the ranks and retire from the same firm or government department having achieved a middle or senior rank. That was before there was a gig economy, before computers allowed people to set up their own microbusinesses, and before the word 'precariat' had been coined.

What a pity the ABS has challenged this myth with hard data in their annual series on Job Mobility. In the 1970s on average 17 per cent of workers changed their employer or business in any one year: now only 8 per cent of workers do. We're staying much longer in our jobs. This series, going back to 1972, is shown below.

The trend is clearly towards less mobility, interrupted by the occasional economic shock – the 'recession we had to have' in 1990, and the pandemic in 2020.

One might have expected that increased female participation in the workforce would have seen more mobility, but women have followed the same trend as men: after the mid-1980s the male and female lines are indistinguishable.

Tracing cause and effect would involve a large research task, but there are some plausible explanations.

One is that the workforce has become more professionalised. There are fewer short-term unskilled vacancies, and fewer workers lacking any post-school skills. Work has become a more serious commitment by both employees and employers.

Another is that the cost to the individual in changing jobs has increased. This requires some explanation, because it is not immediately obvious.

Over the last half century there has been a significant fall in personal savings. Fifty years ago we were saving about 15 to 20 per cent of household income. Now our savings are between 2 and 5 per cent of income. This is partly a statistical artefact, because we are now accumulating savings in compulsory superannuation. But in terms of liquidity, such as ability to tide oneself over between jobs, it is a real constraint. The ABS Making ends meet survey shows that 27 per cent of households would be unable to raise $2,000 for something important within a week. We are carrying more personal debt, not because we are spendthrifts, but because some debt, particularly student debt, has been forced upon us, and runaway housing prices have increased the burden of mortgage debt.

To illustrate this fall in savings, we note that the days of long strikes are well behind us. Now a one-day strike is newsworthy. In times past strikes could stretch out for weeks and no industry was immune: in 1973 Sydney's Kings Cross strippers went on strike for up to two months.

We have allowed our economy to evolve into what may be called a pattern of cosy capitalism, where businesses have a compliant and stable (if not necessarily content) workforce. It works for business not only in terms of power in the labour market, but also in the broader economy. Consumption is sustained by innovations such as buy-now-pay-later schemes, heightening dependence on regular pay. People with no cash in reserve depend on car loans and are unlikely to risk taking low-cost-high-deductible home and contents insurance. It's all very convenient for the finance sector.

Cosy capitalism is low-productivity capitalism, because it throttles the dynamics of capitalism. Workers become trapped in low-productivity jobs, and entrepreneurs trying to establish new businesses find it hard to attract labour. Existing firms have little incentive to boost labour productivity if they feel assured that they can hang on to workers in low-productivity jobs and don't have to increase their pay.

There are certain things governments can do to boost productivity that involve removing friction in the system. The government has committed to banning the unjustified use of non-compete clauses, for example. State governments could make it easier for people to move by abolishing real-estate transfer taxes and replacing them with land taxes. The Commonwealth could boost JobSeeker payments and remove some of the spend-down provisions in its asset test, shifting its design from a scheme of distributive welfare to one of income insurance. More could be done to allow for transfer of long service leave and sick leave between employers.

Such policies would boost productivity, but they wouldn't be met with many thanks from those who do well for themselves in our pattern of cosy capitalism. Business lobbies may speak for the short-term interests of existing business, but not for the interests of business in its wider sense. The distinction is important.

https://johnmenadue.com/post/2026/08/less-job-mobility-lower-productiv ity-the-cost-of-cosy-capitalism/