Key Points:
- More than one-in-eight (12.8%) Australian job postings on Indeed mentioned parental leave in their job description in June, up from 10.6% on average last year. References to parental leave were most common in Western Australia and least common in Victoria.
- Parental leave references in Australian job postings are most common in male-dominated occupations, including engineering, finance and tech.
- Australia has a two-tier parental leave system, with both the federal government and employers providing paid leave for new parents. While government-funded leave is relatively short by global standards, it’s often supplemented by employer leave to extend the amount of time parents can spend with their child.
Over the past decade, increasing emphasis on workplace flexibility, gender equality and work-life balance has raised awareness of the issues and needs of new parents. Employer-funded paid parental leave (PPL) policies have become more generous and gender-neutral, often granting leave to both parents, while the federal government has recently increased the length of federal assistance.
There has also been a sharp rise in Australian employers promoting their PPL policies. Since the end of 2021, the share of Australian job postings on Indeed mentioning phrases such as ‘parental leave’ has more than doubled, from 6.3% in December 2021 to 12.8% in June 2024. To be clear, this isn’t a comprehensive measure of how many actual employers offer PPL – the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) estimates almost two-thirds of employers have PPL schemes – and is only a measure of how often it is actively promoted in job postings. But it highlights a shift in how often PPL is used as a selling point to potential employees.
While tremendous progress has been made over the past decade, particularly regarding efforts to make leave more gender-neutral, men still rarely use employer-funded programmes, according to WGEA. Despite that, Indeed’s data shows that PPL policies are most likely to be mentioned in the job postings of typically male-dominated occupations.
Paid parental leave in Australia
Australia has a two-tier parental leave system, reflecting a combination of government-funded and employer-funded leave. The federal government’s PPL scheme currently provides families with 22 weeks of time off, paid at the national minimum wage. In two-parent families, the primary caregiver receives up to 20 weeks of leave, while the secondary caregiver gets at least two. Government-funded leave will increase to 24 weeks and then 26 weeks for families on 1 July 2025 and 1 July 2026, respectively.
By global standards, Australia’s government-funded PPL scheme appears relatively stingy, ranking just 29th out of 38 economically advanced countries in length of PPL extended to primary caregivers, according to the OECD. Even accounting for impending changes in both 2025 and 2026, Australia’s ranking wouldn’t change. Australia’s 20 weeks of paid leave for primary caregivers compares unfavourably with the 51 weeks offered on average across advanced economies globally.
However, drawing direct cross-country comparisons between PPL systems can be difficult. Australia’s scheme, for example, is fully funded through the tax system, requiring no additional contributions from workers. Some other countries use contributions from workers or other insurance mechanisms to increase the length of leave provided to primary and secondary caregivers.
Australia’s federally-funded PPL scheme is supplemented by employer-funded policies that can vary considerably in length and payment. In 2022-23, almost two-thirds of Australian organisations offered PPL to the primary caregiver, ranging from 87% of companies in the education sector to just 27% in the public administration & safety sector, according to the WGEA.
The average payment length is 12 weeks – as high as 14.7 weeks in the electricity, gas, water & waste services and as low as 8.1 weeks in the accommodation & food services sector – with leave typically available to both parents. New parents often combine government and employer-funded programmes to extend leave after having a child.
Employers are using parental leave to attract jobseekers
In June, 12.8% of Australian job postings on Indeed used phrases including ‘parental leave’ and/or ‘maternity leave’ in their job descriptions. References to parental leave have increased considerably, up from an average of 10.6% last year and 8.2% in 2022.
Shifts in attitudes towards workplace flexibility, gender equality and work-life balance have no doubt played some role in this increase. Strong competition for talent may also be a factor, encouraging Australian employers to find ways to stand out. Parental leave benefits, combined with other flexibility of work-life balance benefits, may be one way to achieve that.
References to PPL are more common in some states than others, but their usage has increased noticeably in every part of Australia. In the first half of 2024, 15% of postings in Western Australia noted PPL policies, ahead of Tasmania (14.1%) and New South Wales (12.7%). In just two years, Tasmania has moved from the second-lowest parental leave share to the second-highest.
At 11%, PPL policies are least likely to be promoted in Victoria, but the increase over the past two years was proportionately consistent with other states such as New South Wales and Queensland.
Parental leave is most common in male-dominated occupations
Interestingly, PPL policies are most likely to be emphasised in traditionally male-dominated occupations, such as industrial engineering, civil engineering and banking & finance. In the first half of 2024, 22.6% of industrial engineering postings mentioned parental leave, with civil engineering (21.9%) and banking & finance (21.3%) not far behind. Two tech sectors, information design and software development, also ranked highly.
Growth was strongest among veterinary postings, up 11.7 percentage points over the past two years. Industrial engineering (+10.1 percentage points), customer service (+9.6 percentage points) and retail (+9.4 percentage points) also rose strongly. The parental leave share in almost half of all occupational sectors increased by 5.0 percentage points or more over the past two years.
A small but growing share of men take parental leave
The increase among male-dominated occupations perhaps reflects efforts to make PPL more gender-neutral. In 2022-23, 21% of organisations surveyed by WGEA had a universal PPL policy that did not distinguish between primary or secondary caregiver, up from 15% in 2021-22 and just 10% in 2020-21. Another possibility is that PPL is being used to attract more women into these otherwise male-dominated occupations.
Nevertheless, men represent only a small fraction of parental leave-takers. In 2022-23, men accounted for just 14% of people who took leave as either the primary caregiver or under a universal scheme. While that number has increased from 10% in 2020-21, it’s clear that entrenched gender expectations around child-rearing and caregiving are proving difficult to overcome.
That shouldn’t, however, detract from the tremendous progress that has been made in providing higher-quality and more equitable paid parental leave across Australia. Employer-funded PPL schemes are increasingly generous and there has also been an improvement in the government’s offering. For Australian employers, the next hurdle is finding ways to encourage more men to take advantage of these benefits, easing the burden women typically bear in the months following childbirth.
Methodology
We identify parental leave job postings on Indeed by determining whether terms such as “parental leave” or “maternity leave” are mentioned in job descriptions.
Data on the length of paid parental leave for both primary and secondary caregivers comes directly from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
Data on employer-funded paid parental leave comes from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency’s (WGEA) annual gender equality scorecard.
