It turns out that Australia may have one of the highest rates of job dissatisfaction in the world. A recent report shows that some 82 percent of all citizens in the country are interested in leaving the work they are currently in.
Early signs seem to point to the economic recession as a key part of the issue. Many businesses and organizations are now not interested in increasing the salaries of any workers. As a result, more people are feeling that they are putting in long hours for no respect. The problem extends more when those businesses demand that their workers at least keep up the same productivity levels as before if not demand more out of them. It is enough to leave 82 percent unhappy.
The study shows that men are more unhappy with their current work than women on the whole. One of the things cited by many men is that they want to have more flexibility in their workplace.
Out of the 82 percent that said that they would be open to new work, about 37 percent are actively looking for work as we speak. That means that there is a large fraction of the workforce that may not be devoting their entire attention to the work that they are currently involved with. That can be a problem for their employers as well as the country as a whole.
The highest levels of dissatisfaction showed up in Queensland where just under half of the entire workforce was actively looking for new work. The only areas where dissatisfaction fell were in New South Wales and Victoria. In the case of New South Wales, this fact may only be true because the numbers were already so high previously. Last year in that area, 57 percent of the workforce was activity looking for work. That has since dropped to 51 percent, but we are still talking about over half of all working people.
Those who have been studying the problem have noticed a correlation between job stress and the amount of people looking for new work. It appears that when individuals are more stressed, they are more likely to try to find work outside of what they are doing. This may even be true when they were previously content with the work that they were doing. Something about general financial turmoil seems to shake people up.
Finally, the research uncovered an interesting bit of data. It appears that men have become just as interested in workplace flexibility as women. Historically speaking, this was not something that occurred as much in males as it did in females. It appears that with this new found desire in men, more individuals (particularly men) are becoming job hunters. Researchers do not expect these trends to go away unless the economy in general begins to improve. This is what their data would indicate at any rate.