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INTRODUCTION

This product provides a range of information about the release of microdata from the May 2014 Survey of Employee Earnings and Hours (EEH). The microdata is made available through a Expanded Confidentialised Unit Record File (CURF) released with the approval of the Australian Statistician. The CURF is accessible through the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Remote Access Data Laboratory (RADL) and the ABS Data Laboratory (ABSDL).

The RADL is a secure on-line database query system, under which microdata are held on a server at the ABS. Users of the RADL can submit programs in SAS, SPSS and STATA software to interrogate and analyse the microdata, and access the results.

The ABSDL is the data analysis solution for high-end data users who want to extract full value from ABS microdata. The ABSDL provides a more responsive and interactive environment in which to analyse CURFs than that offered by the RADL. The ABSDL is available to approved clients in a secure data laboratory in any ABS state or territory office.

ABOUT THE SURVEY

The EEH survey is conducted every two years and designed to provide detailed statistics on the composition and distribution of employee earnings, hours paid for and the methods used to set employees' pay. Information is collected from a sample of employers about characteristics of both the employers (such as industry and sector) and their employees (such as occupation, type of employee, and method of setting pay). This information is used to provide comprehensive statistics about earnings and hours paid for, for various groups of employees, classified by for example industry, occupation or pay setting method. Estimates from the survey were published in Employee Earnings and Hours, Australia, May 2014 (cat. no. 6306.0) on 22nd January 2015, which is available on the ABS website.

A number of changes were introduced in May 2014 to data items collected about employees. These included:

• The item Adult/Junior employee was modified, and further categories included. The new item 'rate of pay' has the following categories: adult rate; junior rate; apprentice or trainee rate; and disability rate;
• The actual age of the employees was collected for the first time in 2014. Prior to this, the information on age was collected only as 'under 18 years', '18 years and under 21 years' and '21 years and over'; and
• Hours paid for data were requested for all employees, including Upper level managers and Owner managers of incorporated enterprises (collectively referred to as Managerial employees). Prior to this, hours paid for data was collected only for non-managerial employees. Despite this change, hours paid for could not be provided for Managerial employees where there was no relationship between earnings and hours. As a result, data for hours paid for and hourly cash earnings have only been produced for employees with a link between earnings and hours.

• A detailed list of data items for the Expanded CURF available on the Downloads tab;
• The Quality Declaration, Abbreviations and Glossary relating to these products can be found on the Explanatory Notes tab.