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Travel restrictions during the pandemic and an expanding workforce add up to a bigger holiday bank than ever, Roy Morgan finds.
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Workers accrue record 200 million days of annual leave
22 December 2023
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10 minute read
Almost 9 million workers have accrued a record amount of annual leave with 200 million days in the holiday bank, according to data from Roy Morgan.
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Its research showed the entitlements had risen by more than 30 per cent since March 2020, when the figure was 150 million days, after increasing rapidly during COVID.
Roy Morgan CEO Michele Levine said travel restrictions during the pandemic and an expanding workforce were the main reasons.
“The bulk of this increase occurred during the pandemic years as Australians were forced to stay at home and weren’t allowed to travel internationally – and for much of time not allowed to travel interstate either,” she said.
“By September 2021, as restrictions and lockdowns began to ease for the final time, Australians had accrued a total of 185 million days of annual leave.”
“The leave was shared by Australian workers at an average of 14.1 days per worker, up from 12.3 pre-pandemic – an increase of almost two days per worker during the pandemic.
“Since September 2021, the average days of annual leave accrued has stayed constant at 14.1 days but the overall level of accrued annual leave has increased as the workforce has rapidly expanded during the last two years.”
Roy Morgan employment figures showed the workforce now comprised over 15.5 million workers, up by 1 million from two years ago. This included over 14 million employed Australians, an increase of over 820,000 over the last two years.
Of these, there were now more than 8.8 million in paid employment with holiday entitlements, including 7 million with at least two weeks and more than 20 per cent with over five weeks.
In addition, there had been a “significant increase” in the share of workers with greater than seven weeks, up from 1.35 million two years ago to 1.6 million – one in nine workers – today.
However, the largest increase had been among workers with less than two weeks accrued, who had risen by 400,000 to 1.8 million.
“A closer look at how much annual leave Australians have accrued shows increases for those with between zero and three weeks of annual leave, and also those with seven-plus weeks of annual leave,” Ms Levine said.
“These potential holidaymakers, representing over 1.5 million working Australians, are an increasingly lucrative potential market for travel and tourism operators to tap into.”
Meanwhile over a third of those in paid employment – 5.1 million workers – lacked leave entitlements.
“One important factor to take into consideration when looking at the accrued annual leave … is that nearly two in five Australian workers actually have no accrued annual leave – now 36.7 per cent of workers,” she said.
“In fact, when this large cohort of workers with no annual leave due is removed from the equation the average amount of annual leave due for workers who do have annual leave due rises to over 20 days – equivalent to a four-week holiday.”
The results come from the Roy Morgan Single Source survey, derived from comprehensive in-depth interviews with over 1,000 Australians each week and around 60,000 a year.
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