Why millennials are getting stuck in low-paid jobs for longer

Updated

Brendan Evans' introduction to working life will feel familiar to many. A trolley boy at 14, then a pizza boy at 16, he now works as a kitchenhand at The Dunkirk pub in the inner-Sydney suburb of Pyrmont.

"It can be a bit of a rush, especially on Fridays … We do about 200 meals an hour, hour-and-a-half, on a good day. That can be strenuous because I'm running to get food for the chef and trying to keep up with the plates, stuff like that," the 19-year-old said.

More than 40 per cent of Australia's kitchenhands are males aged 15-19, according to the 2016 census. Only two other occupations have higher concentrations of teenage workers. (We'll look at these later.)

The kind of work we do can change dramatically over a lifetime — especially as the notion of a "job for life" is fast losing currency. Nevertheless, the evolution of our working lives often follows a similar pattern, with particular jobs typically done at particular ages, census figures show.

The charts below show the top occupations for men and women at different ages, ranked by the concentration of workers that age.

Each chart shows the age distribution of workers in the job. The higher the peak, the more workers that age (as a percentage of all workers in that job).

Hit play, use the slider or enter an age to see the jobs dominated by people your age.

Australia's youngest workers are increasingly concentrated in a handful of hospitality and food preparation jobs, 2016 census figures show.

Workers aged 15-34 make up 84 per cent of fast food cooks (up from 75 per cent in 2006), 79 per cent of bar attendants and baristas (up from 73 per cent) and 66 per cent of cafe workers (up from 56 per cent).

This chart shows the age distributions for more than 280 occupations in the census, all on one chart. (It excludes those with fewer than 5000 workers.) Each line represents a job.

Australia's restaurant kitchens and supermarket checkouts are packed with teenagers.

More than half of the country's fast food cooks and one third of its checkout operators and office cashiers are aged 15-18.

Ever dreamed of being a sports star? The most common ages for professional sports people are 19, 20 and 21. The same is true for bar attendants and baristas, while defence force members and veterinary nurses are commonly in their early 20s.

Australia's tech industry is dominated by workers in their thirties. For example, 30- to 35-year-olds make up 14 per cent of all workers but 30 per cent of multimedia specialists and web developers.

Work in management? Chances are you're in your forties.

As for baby boomers, the highest percentages are found among school principals, library and museum technicians, bus and coach drivers, and caretakers.

Notice how the peaks to the left of the chart were much taller and sharper than the bumps to the right? This tells us the jobs we work when we're older employ a wider range of ages, while the jobs we work as teenagers employ very few older workers.

If you've ever worked as a fast food cook or checkout cashier, you probably have a good idea why.

"These are low-skilled occupations that are very easy to enter … which also means they're very, very routine jobs," Angela Knox, from the University of Sydney business school, said.

"Unless you were someone who thrived on routine work, you'd go out of your mind with the monotony if you were doing it full-time, so you get out of there relatively quickly and move on to something that offers you more of a challenge."

But jobs for young people weren't always like this, according to Johanna Wyn, director of the University of Melbourne's Youth Research Centre.

"Instead of having a broad area of tasks people might do, many industries are breaking jobs down into smaller components. People get one area of work and are told to just do that," Professor Wyn said.

"It's almost less professional — and it's very, very unsatisfying. In the past, jobs were more rounded and they might evolve … People could build something and work out their gifts and skills."

This has helped to widen the divide between those with qualifications and those without, and may be part of the reason young people are increasingly concentrated in certain jobs.

Between the 2006 and 2016 censuses, average ages decreased in many occupations already dominated by young workers, bucking the trend in more than 90 per cent of jobs.

The average age of fast food cooks, for example, fell nearly two years to 24.9. The average age of cafe workers fell 1.5 years to 29.1, while bar attendants and baristas dropped 0.6 years to an average age of 28.7.

The key driver? An increase in workers aged 25 and younger, according to census figures.

"Some of it is credential creep," Professor Wyn said.

Young Australians have more formal education than at any other time, and it is increasingly the norm for jobs to require formal qualifications. "The longer time spent in education means more competition for the jobs that finance their study, and these are largely in hospitality and services," she said.

And even those with qualifications are often required to undertake an internship or traineeship on very low wages or no wages at all. Sometimes these can last for a year or longer, Professor Wyn said. "They're desperate to get a start so they might hold that together by doing a part-time job in a cafe or bar."

Back at The Dunkirk, Mr Evans says his work as a kitchenhand pays the bills while he devotes the rest of his time to study and music. He has two years to go on his Bachelor of Composition and Music Production at the Australian Institute of Music, and hopes to move out of the kitchen and into the bar or bottle shop — again, jobs that workers his age dominate.

"I don't want to be too long in the kitchen," he said. "It's not too bad but I'm always soaking wet when I walk out, so that's not so fun. It can get very hot in there."

Data notes

The 2016 census asked employed people aged 15 or older about the main job they held in the week before census night.

Millennials includes people aged 15-34. Gen X includes people aged 35-53. Baby Boomers includes people aged 54-71.

"Top jobs for people age X" graphic excludes jobs with fewer than 2000 male or female workers.

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Topics: work, community-and-society, youth, business-economics-and-finance, economic-trends, australia

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