Where admin and contact centre workers go next

By Stefan Savva, Founder · Figures from Jobs and Skills Australia, checked on 28 October 2026 · 6 min read

People who leave contact centre, reception and data entry roles in Australia most often move into general clerical work, office management and customer service management: work next door to what they did, not a leap. The figures below count every recorded move between occupations, for any reason, not moves after a redundancy, and they say nothing about AI.

They come from Jobs and Skills Australia's Data on Occupation Mobility: Unpacking Workers Movements, published in January 2024, which tracks the moves Australian workers made between occupations from 2011-12 to 2020-21. This guide is for the employer planning support for people whose roles are ending, so that the help points at the moves people actually make.

How to read the figures

For each starting occupation, the tables show the three destinations with the most recorded moves, among the destinations people from that occupation move into more often than the workforce as a whole does. That second condition matters: it filters out occupations that are simply large everywhere, so what is left are the moves that are typical of this kind of work.

Moves is the number of recorded moves into that destination, pooled across the ten years.
Share is that destination's share of all the recorded moves into the qualifying destinations from that starting occupation, rounded to a whole percentage.

The full data, for every occupation we publish, is on our data page as a downloadable file.

Call or contact centre operators

Where call or contact centre operators move
Destination	Moves	Share
Customer Service Manager	5,625	20%
General Clerk	4,955	18%
Bank Officer	2,600	9%

The most common move out of a contact centre is into customer service management: work that still centres on customers, at a level above the queue. General clerical work is close behind.

Contact centre team leaders

Where contact centre team leaders move
Destination	Moves	Share
Call or Contact Centre Manager	1,310	28%
Customer Service Manager	985	21%
Corporate General Manager	410	9%

Team leaders most often move up into contact centre management, and next most often into customer service management.

Receptionists

Where receptionists move
Destination	Moves	Share
General Clerk	18,965	37%
Office Manager	9,230	18%
Property Manager	2,910	6%

More than a third of the qualifying moves out of reception go to general clerical work, and close to a fifth to office management.

Data entry operators

Where data entry operators move
Destination	Moves	Share
General Clerk	3,225	30%
Office Manager	1,145	11%
Accounts Clerk	840	8%

Executive assistants

Where executive assistants move
Destination	Moves	Share
General Clerk	8,745	31%
Office Manager	5,515	19%
Program or Project Administrator	3,160	11%

Executive assistants follow the same pattern as receptionists and data entry operators, with one difference: project administration appears near the top. The organising, scheduling and follow-up skills of an assistant role carry straight across to coordinating a project, which makes it a natural step for someone who wants to move away from supporting one person.

What this means for the support you offer

Three things follow for an employer.

The next role is usually close by. Across all five starting points, the common destinations are clerical, office and customer roles. Support that helps a person show how their experience fits those roles is more useful than support that assumes a fresh start.

The move is still a move. A receptionist applying for an office manager role, or a contact centre operator applying for a customer service manager role, is applying for a job they have not held. They need a resume written for that role and practice explaining the step in an interview. Our guide to career transition coaching or outplacement covers what that kind of support looks like.

Past moves are not a forecast. These figures describe what happened from 2011-12 to 2020-21. They do not say which roles will be hiring next year, or how technology will change any of them. Use them to point support in a sensible direction, not to promise anyone a particular job.

Where to send people for free help

Alongside any support you pay for, point people to the government's What's Next website, which the Fair Work Ombudsman also recommends to people being made redundant.

Changing Careers shows each person the Australian roles they are already close to, using this same Jobs and Skills Australia data, and helps them apply, with a real Australian career coach. It costs A$599 per person for twelve weeks.

Common questions

Where do contact centre workers go after leaving?

Jobs and Skills Australia's mobility data shows call or contact centre operators most often move into customer service manager and general clerk roles, among the destinations they choose more often than the workforce as a whole.

Do these figures show what happens after a redundancy?

The figures count every recorded move between occupations from 2011-12 to 2020-21, for any reason. They are a guide to typical moves, not a record of what happened to people after redundancy.

Where does this data come from?

The figures come from Jobs and Skills Australia's Data on Occupation Mobility: Unpacking Workers Movements, published in January 2024, and are reformatted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence.