A NOTE FROM THE DIRECTOR


Welcome to the October 2013 edition of the Migrant Statistics News brought to you from the National Migrant Statistics Unit (NMSU).

As anticipated, 2013 has been a very busy and productive year for the NMSU.

The results of many months of hard work came to fruition with the recent release of two main publications from the 2011 Migrants Census Data Enhancement (CDE) Project. You may have already seen these publications and if you haven't I encourage you to take a look.

A research paper presenting findings from the quality study was released on August 19, assessing the linking methodology, data quality and the integrated data's fitness for purpose, see Research Paper: Assessing the Quality of Linking Migrant Settlement Records to 2011 Census Data, Aug 2013 (cat. no. 1351.0.55.043).

This was followed by the statistical publication, Understanding Migrant Outcomes - Enhancing the Value of Census Data, Australia, 2011 (cat. no. 3417.0), released on the 19 September. We are very excited to bring you this publication, as for the first time, the settlement outcomes of recent migrants are cross classified by aspects of their entry conditions, such as visa stream, whether they applied onshore or offshore, and whether they were a main or secondary applicant. The team is now working towards releasing finer level data in the form of State based tables and developing a Survey TableBuilder to allow external users flexible access to this data. More information about this project and related publications is available in this newsletter.
In the April newsletter I flagged a new Census QuickStats product, QuickStats Country of Birth. This product provides quick summary information about migrants from a selected range of countries (compared with all overseas born residents and the Australian born population) in a range of geographic areas. This new product has been well received and users were keen for us to go a step further and release this type of information for finer levels of geography. To this end, we have a new project underway to bring you information about the characteristics of overseas born residents at the LGA level. This information is yet to be released but I look forward to updating you in the next newsletter.

Work continues on all fronts with the Census with SEIFA being released in TableBuilder on 24 September. Looking forward to 2016 Census, the public submission phase is now complete and the information paper Census of Population and Housing: Submissions Report, 2016 (cat. no. 2007.0.55.001) was released last month. The report summarises the key themes emerging from the public submissions received by the ABS on the proposed content and procedures for the 2016 Census of Population and Housing. Thank you once again for the interest and quality of the submissions.

To keep up to date with the recent releases of 2011 Census data, the NMSU has produced an updated migrant Census data cube in the Migrant Data Matrices (cat. no. 3415.0), providing access to a wide range of Census data on migrants and ethnicity. The 2011 Census of Population and Housing, Australia data cube contains 19 tables, including: cultural and language diversity; person characteristics; usual address on Census night, one year ago, five year ago; employment; income; education; and qualification data items. Migrant Data Matrices provides users with links to ABS summary data on migrants, more information is provided within this newsletter.

You may have been contacted recently by the NMSU to contribute to our 2013 Data Needs Review. From time to time we review our understanding of the key priority areas for migrant data required to be able to develop policy and provide a solid evidence base for policy evaluation. If you did complete the questionnaire sent out in July, we are very appreciate of your time and interest in providing us with this information. Of course if you were not contacted, and would like to tell us about your data requirements or unmet data needs feel free to contact us via migrant.statistics.unit@abs.gov.au.

As always, I hope you find this newsletter both informative and interesting. Remember to visit our recently updated Migrant and Ethnicity Topics@ a Glance page for easy access to migrant related information and links to data. If you have any comments, questions or suggestions about the work of the National Migrant Statistics Unit, please feel free to contact us.

Andrew Middleton

Director
Culture, Recreation and Migrant Statistics