The most recent Roy Morgan employment perceptions survey provides interesting insight into how people are thinking about the widely expected economic downturn.

On the one hand, 70% of respondents believe that unemployment will increase over the next 12 months, the highest figure since the last recession, and the 3rd highest number recorded since Roy Morgan started asking this question back in 1975.

But this is what is going to happen to other people. The proportion of respondents who think that their own job is safe is 80%, the same as twelve months ago.

The proportion who think that they could find another job quickly is down, from 72% to 63%, but last year’s figure was exceptionally high. 63% is a normal number for this decade.

These figures suggests that very few people yet think that they are personally threatened by the downturn, and most of the worry is the seemingly normal concern people have when their employer isn’t doing so well or they feel that their employer might not want them.

I call all these posts “Australia’s surprisingly secure workers”, but that’s a reference to the exaggerated claims of job insecurity frequently made in the media (and indeed in books by people who should know better). These Roy Morgan figures actually surprise me.