Staff numbers up, casualisation down at Australian universities

Australia’s university sector is employing more staff, and giving them more secure jobs, despite high-profile redundancies at some institutions and an ad hoc response to anti-casualisation laws.

Overall university staff numbers increased more than 2 per cent last year, and the permanently employed share rose by almost one percentage point, according to Department of Education figures.

The estimated number of casual university workers fell by more than 600 in full-time equivalent terms, in a decline mostly pre-dating legislation aimed at constraining insecure employment. The staffing figures were recorded on 31 March last year, just weeks after the new laws came into effect in February.

The legislation entitles employees to apply for permanent jobs after six months of casual work. Monash University higher education expert Andrew Norton said it appeared that some institutions were acting proactively to comply with the new legislation, while others waited for their casual staff to lodge applications.

Norton said the small overall decline in casual employment masked “wild differences” – ranging from a 50 per cent reduction to a 24 per cent increase – at the institutional level. His analysis of the figures found that casual staff numbers had fallen at 13 universities, risen at 14 and barely changed at 15.

Casual staff headcount data compiled by the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) shows even more variation, from a 35 per cent decline at one university to an 84 per cent increase at another, between 2023-24 and 2024-25. Both datasets show a 3 per cent decline at the aggregate level.

Accurate data on Australian universities’ casual employment is notoriously difficult to obtain. The WGEA figures are recorded at different times of the year by different workplaces, while the Education Department statistics for the most recent year are estimates only. A dozen or so universities appear to have estimated their 2025 figures by rounding the previous year’s tallies to the nearest whole numbers.

Although universities’ casual ranks shrank significantly in the first year of the coronavirus pandemic, Norton said “industrial pressure” had been the main influence since then. A 2024 study estimated that casual employment across the sector was set to fall by up to 21 per cent as a result of enterprise agreement clauses requiring some universities to convert casual roles into permanent positions.

Norton said seven universities had reduced their continuing and fixed-term staff numbers between March 2024 and March 2025, with big declines at the Australian National University, Federation University and the University of Southern Queensland. But most institutions had increased their workforces, often by the equivalent of hundreds of full-time staff.

“The story of the year has been…retrenchments,” he said. “All the attention goes to people being sacked, but the routine hires get no coverage whatsoever.”

He said rising enrolments last year had increased universities’ need for teaching, while their mounting compliance burdens may have necessitated more non-academic staff. But the staffing statistics contradicted an “overall narrative” of “tight cost control” by administrators.

“It’s…common now that the unis are pleading poor but hiring lots of extra staff. They’re probably poor because they’ve hired too many people. When they get a bit of extra revenue they lock it in, and then as soon as they get a few cost increases, they’re back to feeling impoverished. Give them extra cash and the cycle starts again.”

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com