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QUALITY DECLARATION - SUMMARY

INSTITUTIONAL ENVIRONMENT

For information on the institutional environment of the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), including the legislative obligations of the ABS, financing and governance arrangements, and mechanisms for scrutiny of ABS operations, please see ABS Institutional Environment.

RELEVANCE

The Survey of Characteristics of Employment (COE) presents information on: weekly earnings of employees which shows: the distribution of weekly earnings of all wage and salary earners classified by full-time/part-time workers; and employment characteristics which presents data on trade union membership, fixed-term contracts, independent contractors, working arrangements, and employment found through a labour hire firm or employment agency, all of which can be cross classified by other employment characteristics such as hours worked, industry, occupation and sector of job as well as personal characteristics. Data are used in the development and review of wages and labour market policies, and in wage negotiation processes.

TIMELINESS

The Characteristics of Employment survey is conducted annually in August as a supplement to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) monthly Labour Force Survey (LFS). Results from this survey are released in the publication Characteristics of Employment, Australia (cat. no. 6333.0).

ACCURACY

The microdata generally contains finer levels of detail for data items than what is otherwise published in other formats, for example, in Characteristics of Employment, Australia (cat. no. 6333.0). For information on the level of detail provided, please refer to the data item list in the Downloads tab.

Steps to confidentialise the data made available in TableBuilder are taken in such a way as to maximise the usefulness of the content while maintaining the confidentiality of respondents selected in the survey. As a result, it may not be possible to exactly reconcile all the statistics produced from TableBuilder with other published statistics. Further information about the steps taken to confidentialise the microdata is available through the Survey Confidentiality Page.

COHERENCE

The ABS seeks to maximise consistency and comparability over time by minimising changes to its surveys. However, sound survey practice requires ongoing development and maintenance to maintain the integrity of the data and the efficiency of collection. For changes between iterations of the survey, please refer to the Comparability of Time Series section in the Explanatory Notes of Characteristics of Employment, Australia (cat. no. 6333.0)

Caution should be exercised when comparing the estimates from this TableBuilder with previous surveys as some data items have changed and population groups are conceptually different.

Caution should be exercised when comparing results from the COE survey to previous Forms of Employment (FOE) survey (2008–2013) and Employee Earnings, Benefits and Trade Union Membership (EEBTUM) as the population Employees in this release is not directly comparable to the Employees population in both FOE and EEBTUM.

For information on the comparability of time series for the publication Employee Earnings, Benefits and Trade Union Membership, Australia (cat. no. 6310.0), see the Explanatory Notes.

For information on the comparability of time series for the publication Forms of Employment, Australia (cat. no. 6359.0), see the Explanatory Notes.

For information on the comparability of time series for the publication Working Time Arrangements, Australia (cat. no. 6342.0), see the Explanatory Notes.

INTERPRETABILITY