Bureaucrats who jumped ship to another department were happier with their wages, work conditions, hours and flexibility than the colleagues they left behind, the university's researchers found.

Labour market expert Genevieve Knight and her team have been studying the experiences of workers moving out and those in the public sector in an attempt to understand what is in store for the 16,500 federal public servants set to depart under the present round of cost-cutting.

The findings indicated that public servants moving to the private sector were still likely to be suffering from lower wages and satisfaction levels for years after they said goodbye to their departments.

However, Dr Knight said on Tuesday staying in the bureaucracy but finding a new department appeared to be a recipe for workplace bliss, while keeping the faith with a long-term public service employer was more likely to produce unhappy public servants.

Dr Knight and her team at the university's National Institute for Labour Studies looked at 80,000 records for 6000 Australian workers between 2003 and 2012 to track the experience of employees moving between the public and private sectors.

They found that after three years workers who had moved from the public service to private enterprise had not returned to the same pay levels as their former colleagues.

In the first year, public servants who moved to the private sector had 6.4 per cent lower earnings on average than those who stayed in the bureaucracy and were not happy about it.

But by contrast those who were "shuffled" to other employers in the public sector were found to have higher job satisfaction for pay, hours, flexibility and nature of the work than those who stayed with the same employer.

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The researchers believe those left behind in shrinking workplaces are being made more unhappy by the burden of having to do the same amount of work, or more, with fewer workers.

Dr Knight said her team could find no pay differential between departmental leavers and the stayers, but those who departed were found to be happier with what they got.

"They're just as well off as those who stayed, no pay difference for them, but that's very different than those who go to the market sector," she said.

"Once they're shuffled [within the public sector], they're happier with their pay, their work, their hours and their flexibility than those who stayed in the same job.

"We're speculating that is because they have moved out of a situation where a smaller number of people have to do the same amount of work, for example.

"With the shuffling, you'll be pretty well off."

The only downside to shuffling the Flinders team found was bureaucrats tended to be less happy with their job security once they had found a new department, probably reflecting the greater likelihood of their being on fixed or temporary contracts.

"The one thing they're not happier with is their job security, which is understandable because they might have shorter job tenure," Dr Knight said.