Hospitality Workforce Employs More Millennials Than Ever Before

Census date reveals wider patterns


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Young workers are taking up a much larger slice of the hospitality workforce thanks to the ease of finding “routine” jobs, according to the latest Cenus data.

Millennial employees aged 15 to 34 now make up some 84 per cent of fast food cooks, (compared to 75 per cent in 2006), 79 per cent of bar attendants and baristas (compared to 73 per cent) and 66 per cent of cafe workers (up from 56 per cent), the ABC reports.

University of Sydney business school lecturer Angela Knox said that “low-skilled occupations… are very easy to enter” but fail to offer more than “routine”.

“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,” she said.

“So you get out of there relatively quickly and move on to something that offers you more of a challenge.”

Across the 2016 to 2016 period, the average age of workers dropped in 90 per cent of occupations, and Johanna Wyn, director of the University of Melbourne’s Youth Research Centre, says this indicates the wider shifts taking place across youth employment,

“Instead of having a broad area of tasks people might do, many industries are breaking jobs down into smaller components,” she said.

“People get one area of work and are told to just do that.

“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.”

Troy Nankervis

22 November 2017

Article by:

Troy Nankervis




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