The Career Changes Australians Actually Make

Quick answer

Most career change advice starts with a personality quiz or a list of "transferable skills" and leaves you to guess whether anyone actually makes that jump. Jobs and Skills Australia (JSA) has the real answer, built from ten years of Australian Taxation Office income tax data tracking exactly which occupation people were in one year and which occupation they were in the next. It is called Data on Occupation Mobility (DOM), and it shows the moves people genuinely make, not the moves a skills-matching algorithm thinks they should make.

The headline finding: most people do not change occupations at all. Between 2011-12 and 2020-21, between 83% and 92% of workers stayed in the same occupation year on year, according to JSA's Data on Occupation Mobility report (January 2024). Of the people who do move, most move sideways into a job that shares a similar skill set, not into something unrelated. And some occupations act as "gateways" that connect to a much wider spread of destination jobs than others, which makes them a safer bet if you are choosing a move with no clear script to follow.

If you are a call centre operator, an admin worker or a claims officer weighing up what comes next, look for the moves other people in your occupation have actually made, then check the skills overlap before you commit. Below is what the data shows, and how to use it.

Get your free Career Change Check to see three proven moves people from your kind of work have made: start your assessment.

Why real transition data beats a skills quiz

Skills-matching quizzes ask what you are good at and suggest jobs that sound plausible. They do not tell you whether anyone has actually made that move, or how often it worked out. That gap matters when you are three months from your last redundancy payment, not a graduate happy to experiment.

DOM closes that gap because it is not a survey or a model. It is drawn from what people actually reported to the ATO. JSA links each person's occupation code from one financial year to the next, across the whole employed population, and counts the flows between specific occupations. A pathway like General Clerk to Office Manager shows up because a measurable number of real workers made that exact move, not because it sounds plausible on paper.

This does not tell you what to do. It tells you what has been done, at scale, by people who were probably in a similar spot to you, which is a more useful question than "what could I theoretically do with these skills."

The gateway occupations that open the most doors

Definition: gateway occupation An occupation that a large number of workers move into and out of, connecting to a wide range of other jobs. Because so many people pass through it from different starting points, and move on to different destinations, it tends to have more proven exit and entry routes than a narrow specialist role.

JSA's occupation-to-occupation flow data shows a small number of roles act like hubs. Office Manager is one of the clearest examples: JSA's January 2024 report shows Program or Project Administrator moving into Office Manager as one of the largest same-level "sideway" transitions in the country, and General Clerk moving into Office Manager as one of the largest "up-skill" moves. Two very different starting points, one common landing spot.

Aged or Disabled Carer works the same way from the care sector. JSA's case study shows the occupation pulling workers in from Sales Assistant (General), Commercial Cleaner and Community Worker, while people leaving it most often move on to Disabilities Services Officer, Registered Nurse (Aged Care) or Personal Care Assistant. That is a gateway with entry ramps from retail and cleaning, and exit ramps into higher-paid care and health roles.

The point is not to chase Office Manager or Aged Care roles specifically. Gateway occupations exist in most sectors, and JSA's Occupation Mobility Interactive Tool, updated 2 July 2026 with financial years 2021-22 and 2022-23 data, lets you look up your own occupation and see its actual inflows and outflows. If your role has thin connections on the map, a two-step move through a gateway occupation can be more realistic than one leap into something unrelated.

Caption: Gateway occupations like Office Manager sit at the centre of many proven transition paths, not just one. Alt text: Diagram showing Office Manager as a gateway occupation connected to multiple origin and destination roles based on JSA occupation mobility data.

Where call centre, admin and claims workers actually land

Call centre, admin and claims roles sit in the clerical, administrative and community-service skill bands JSA tracks, and they show up often in the flow data, both as places people move from and places people move into.

Receptionist (General) is one of the occupations JSA identifies with the largest net outflow of workers nationally, alongside Checkout Operator and Office Cashier. That is not a red flag on its own; JSA notes that high-outflow entry-level roles are often filled by casual and part-time workers, including students, moving on as planned. But it does confirm that people leave front-line admin and reception-style roles at a higher rate than most occupations, and that there is nothing unusual about wanting to move on from one.

Where do they go? The same JSA data on same-level and up-skill pathways gives a strong hint. General Clerks move most often into Office Manager and Program or Project Manager roles, a step up in seniority using the same organisational and coordination skills. Call centre and customer service workers follow a similar logic into supervisory and account-management roles, where the phone and CRM skills carry across but the title and pay band change. Claims officers tend to move within the insurance and financial services cluster, into senior claims, underwriting support or complaints and resolution roles, where the regulatory knowledge is directly reusable rather than starting from zero.

These are not guesses. They follow the same logic JSA's data shows across the labour market: people move into occupations that share skills with the one they are leaving, far more often than they jump into something unrelated. If you want the specific version of this for your own background, we have laid out proven routes for call centre to customer success, admin to health administration and claims to senior claims.

One caution worth naming. JSA's skill-level analysis shows workers in skill level 2 occupations, which includes much clerical, administrative and community-service work, moved into lower-skilled roles 45% of the time when they changed jobs, a higher down-skill rate than most other bands (Data on Occupation Mobility, January 2024). Take that as a nudge to be deliberate about direction, not a reason to panic. A lateral or backward move is sometimes the right short-term call when you need income fast; just go in knowing which moves tend to be a step up and which tend to be a step down.

Feasibility versus theory: pairing real moves with skills overlap

Real transition data tells you what people have done. It does not tell you why it worked for them or whether it will work for you. That is where JSA's "Skills Transitions" similarity scores add a useful check. JSA builds them by comparing the text-based and numeric skill and task profile of each occupation, and grouped into high, medium and low similarity bands.

Treat these scores as a sense check, not a guarantee. JSA's own case study on Aged or Disabled Carer found that half of the people moving into the role came from low-similarity occupations such as Kitchenhand and Waiter, common entry-level jobs people hold while training for something else. A low score does not rule a move out, and a high one does not guarantee it will suit you. Combined, the two datasets give you a shortlist: real moves from people like you, checked against how much retraining the gap actually implies.

Definition: occupation mobility The rate and pattern at which people move between different occupations over time. JSA measures it using linked ATO income tax data, tracking each worker's occupation code year on year to see who stayed, who moved, and where they went.

Zooming out, occupation mobility in Australia has been falling for decades. The job mobility rate (a slightly broader ABS measure covering any job change, not just occupation change) sat at 8% in the year to February 2024, down from 9.6% the year before, though still above the pandemic low of 7.5% in the year to February 2021 (Jobs and Skills Australia, 24 July 2025). Fewer people are moving jobs generally, which makes it more valuable, not less, to know which moves actually work when you do decide to make one.

How to pick a proven move, then take the first step

Start with your current occupation, not a list of jobs that sound interesting. Look at what JSA's data shows people in your role actually moved into. Check whether the likely landing spot is a gateway occupation with multiple connections, or a narrow one with a single exit. Cross-check the skills overlap, then discount roles that need a licence or qualification you cannot get within your runway.

From there the steps look like most job searches, just with better odds because you are chasing a route others have proven works: foreground the skills the destination role shares with your current one, target employers who hire into that exact transition, and treat the first 90 days as time to close the remaining skills gap rather than a reason to wait until you feel "ready."

If you want a structured view of proven paths mapped to your own background rather than a generic list, our career change pathways tool, including the customer success roles pathway, works from the same logic. And if AI exposure is part of what is pushing you to move, it is worth checking your occupation against the current picture of at-risk jobs in Australia before you choose a destination, so you are not trading one exposed role for another.

Get your free Career Change Check and see three proven moves people from your kind of work have made: start the check.

FAQ

What is the most common career change in Australia? Most workers who change occupations move sideways into a job with similar skills, not into an unrelated field. JSA's Data on Occupation Mobility (January 2024) lists Program or Project Administrator to Office Manager, Storeperson to Warehouse Administrator and Waiter to Bar Attendant among the most common same-level moves nationally, based on ten years of tax data.

How many Australians actually change occupations each year? Most do not. JSA found that between 83% and 92% of workers stayed in the same occupation year on year over 2011-12 to 2020-21. Separately, the ABS-based job mobility rate, a broader measure covering any job change, was 8% in the year to February 2024, down from 9.6% the year before.

What is a gateway occupation? A gateway occupation is one with unusually high traffic in and out, connecting people from several different starting jobs to several different destination jobs. Office Manager and Aged or Disabled Carer are examples JSA's data identifies. They are useful targets because more proven routes lead to and from them.

Can I trust skills-matching tools to tell me what job to move into? Use them as a starting shortlist, not a verdict. JSA's own similarity scoring, built by comparing each occupation's underlying skills and tasks, works as a guide rather than a guarantee. Its published case studies show plenty of real moves happening between occupations with only a low similarity score, so a weak match should not rule out a move you have good reason to make.

Where do call centre and admin workers usually go next? Based on JSA's occupation flow data and the skill clusters these roles sit in, common destinations include office and operations management, customer success and account roles, and health or community administration. See our mapped routes from call centre to customer success and admin to health administration for the specific steps and timeframes.

Sources

Jobs and Skills Australia, Data on Occupation Mobility: Unpacking Worker Movements, January 2024. https://www.jobsandskills.gov.au/publications/data-occupation-mobility-unpacking-workers-movements
Jobs and Skills Australia, Occupation Mobility Interactive Tool, updated 2 July 2026 (financial years 2021-22 to 2022-23 data). https://www.jobsandskills.gov.au/data/occupation_mobility_tool
Jobs and Skills Australia, "Workers on the move: job mobility is easing back to pandemic levels but employers still affected", 24 July 2025. https://www.jobsandskills.gov.au/news/workers-move-job-mobility-easing-back-pandemic-levels-employers-still-affected
Full source list for all data used across the Changing Careers guides.