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GLOSSARY

Chain volume measures

Annually-reweighted chain Laspeyres indexes referenced to the current price values in a chosen reference year (i.e. the year when the quarterly chain volume measures sum to the current price annual values). Chain Laspeyres volume measures are compiled by linking together (compounding) movements in volumes, calculated using the average prices of the previous financial year, and applying the compounded movements to the current price estimates of the reference year. Quarterly chain volume estimates are benchmarked to annual chain volume estimates, so that the quarterly estimates for a financial year sum to the corresponding annual estimate.

Generally, chain volume measures are not additive. In other words, component chain volume measures do not sum to a total in the way original current price components do. In order to minimise the impact of this property, the ABS uses the latest base year as the reference year. By adopting this approach, additivity exists for the quarters following the reference year and non-additivity is relatively small for the quarters in the reference year and the quarters immediately preceding it. The latest base year and the reference year will be advanced one year with the release of the June quarter data each year. A change in reference year changes levels but not growth rates, although some revision to recent growth rates can be expected because of the introduction of a more recent base year (and revisions to the current price estimates underlying the chain volume measures).

Duration of unemployment

The elapsed period to the end of the reference week since a person began looking for work, or since a person last worked for two weeks or more, whichever is the shorter. Brief periods of work (of less than two weeks) since the person began looking for work are disregarded.

Employed

Persons aged 15 years and over who, during the reference week:

• worked for one hour or more for pay, profit, commission or payment in kind, in a job or business or on a farm (comprising employees, employers and own account workers);
• worked for one hour or more without pay in a family business or on a farm (i.e. contributing family workers);
• were employees who had a job but were not at work and were:
  • away from work for less than four weeks up to the end of the reference week;
  • away from work for more than four weeks up to the end of the reference week and received pay for some or all of the four week period to the end of the reference week;
  • away from work as a standard work or shift arrangement;
  • on strike or locked out;
  • on workers' compensation and expected to return to their job;
• were employers or own account workers who had a job, business or farm, but were not at work.

Standardised death rates enable the comparison of death rates between populations with different age structures by relating them to a standard population. The ABS standard populations relate to the years ending in 1 (e.g. 2001). The current standard population is all persons in the 2001 Australian population. Standardised death rates are expressed per 1,000 or 100,000 persons. There are two methods of calculating standardised death rates:

• The direct method - this is used when the populations under study are large and the age-specific death rates are reliable. It is the overall death rate that would have prevailed in the standard population if it had experienced at each age the death rates of the population under study.
• The indirect method - this is used when the populations under study are small and the age-specific death rates are unreliable or not known. It is an adjustment to the crude death rate of the standard population to account for the variation between the actual number of deaths in the population under study and the number of deaths which would have occurred if the population under study had experienced the age-specific death rates of the standard population.

Employed persons who usually worked less than 35 hours a week (in all jobs) and either did so during the reference week, or were not at work in the reference week.

Particles as PM₁₀

Particles with an aerodynamic diameter of 10 micrometres or less.

Seasonal adjustment

A means of removing the estimated effects of normal seasonal variations from economic time series so that the effects of other influences are obvious. Seasonal variations are the systematic (though not necessarily regular) intra-year movements of economic time series. These are often the result of non-economic phenomena, such as climatic changes and regular religious festivals (e.g. Christmas and Easter).

State final demand

Conceptually identical to domestic final demand at the national level (the sum of private and government final consumption expenditure and private and public gross fixed capital formation).

National estimates are based on the concepts and conventions embodied in the System of National Accounts, 1993, but for regional (including state) estimates there is no separate international standard. Although national concepts are generally applicable to state accounts, there remain several conceptual and measurement issues that either do not apply or are insignificant nationally. Most of the problems arise in the measurement of gross state product for the transport and storage, communication services, and finance and insurance industries, where production often takes place across state borders. In these cases, a number of conceptual views can be applied to the allocation of value added by state. For more information, see chapter 28 of Australian System of National Accounts: Concepts, Sources and Methods (cat. no. 5216.0).

Trend estimates

Smoothing seasonally adjusted series produces a measure of trend by removing the impact of the irregular component of the series. The trend estimates are derived by applying a 13-term Henderson weighted moving average to the respective seasonally adjusted series. Readers are reminded that trend estimates are subject to revision as subsequent months' data become available.

Unemployed

Persons aged 15 years and over who were not employed during the reference week, and:

• had actively looked for full-time or part-time work at any time in the four weeks up to the end of the reference week and:
  • were available for work in the reference week;
  • were waiting to start a new job within four weeks from the end of the reference week, and could have started in the reference week if the job had been available then.