MARCH KEY FIGURES

		Feb 19	Mar 19	Feb 19 to Mar 19	Mar 18 to Mar 19
Trend
	Employed persons ('000)	12,769.3	12,790.0	20.7	2.4%
	Unemployed persons ('000)	672.7	675.7	3.0	-7.0%
	Unemployment rate (%)	5.0	5.0	0.0 pts	-0.5 pts
	Underemployment rate (%)	8.2	8.2	0.0 pts	-0.4 pts
	Participation rate (%)	65.6	65.6	0.0 pts	0.0 pts
	Monthly hours worked in all jobs ('000 000)	1,772.5	1,776.8	4.3	2.4%
Seasonally Adjusted
	Employed persons ('000)	12,765.9	12,791.5	25.7	2.4%
	Unemployed persons ('000)	662.9	680.0	17.1	-6.1%
	Unemployment rate (%)	4.9	5.0	0.1 pts	-0.4 pts
	Underemployment rate (%)	8.1	8.2	0.1 pts	-0.4 pts
	Participation rate (%)	65.6	65.7	0.1 pts	0.1 pts
	Monthly hours worked in all jobs ('000 000)	1,772.2	1,785.4	13.2	3.0%

MARCH KEY POINTS

TREND ESTIMATES

• Employment increased 20,700 to 12,790,000 persons. Full-time employment increased 18,000 to 8,781,800 persons and part-time employment increased 2,700 to 4,008,200 persons.
• Unemployment increased 3,000 to 675,700 persons.
• Unemployment rate remained steady at 5.0%.
• Participation rate remained steady at 65.6%.
• Monthly hours worked in all jobs increased 4.3 million hours to 1,776.8 million hours.

SEASONALLY ADJUSTED ESTIMATES

• Employment increased 25,700 to 12,791,500 persons. Full-time employment increased 48,300 to 8,798,300 persons and part-time employment decreased 22,600 to 3,993,200 persons.
• Unemployment increased 17,100 to 680,000 persons.
• Unemployment rate increased 0.1 pts to 5.0%.
• Participation rate increased 0.1 pts to 65.7%.
• Monthly hours worked in all jobs increased 13.2 million hours to 1,785.4 million hours.

LABOUR UNDERUTILISATION

• The monthly trend underemployment rate remained steady at 8.2%. The monthly underutilisation rate remained steady at 13.2%.
• The monthly seasonally adjusted underemployment rate increased 0.1 pts to 8.2%. The monthly underutilisation rate increased 0.2 pts to 13.2%.

NOTES

FORTHCOMING ISSUES

Issue	Release Date
April 2019	16 May 2019
May 2019	13 June 2019
June 2019	18 July 2019
July 2019	15 August 2019
Aug 2019	19 September 2019
Sep 2019	17 October 2019

IMPACT OF TOWNSVILLE FLOODS IN FEBRUARY 2019

Flooding in Townsville in February 2019 resulted in a major disruption to the operation of the Labour Force Survey. Given the severity of these disruptions, which affected almost the entire region, and to ensure that this loss of sample did not affect data for Australia and Queensland, the ABS imputed sample for Townsville for February 2019. The imputation drew upon previous information that had recently been collected from people in Townsville.

The ABS re-assessed this imputation, with reference to March 2019 data for Townsville, and has not revised the imputed data for February. The ABS will continue to monitor the data over coming months and undertake additional seasonal analysis of the imputed data in February 2020.


ANNUAL SEASONAL RE-ANALYSIS

The Annual Seasonal Re-analysis (ASR) of the Labour Force series was conducted on estimates up to February 2019. No changes have been made to Labour Force series as a result of this review.

The ASR did highlight that there may be further improvements in the estimation of trend series. Early analysis suggest that indirectly trending rates may result in a smoother trend series, compared with the directly trended series. The ABS will investigate this recommendation further and will provide a summary of the results in coming months.


TRANSITION TO 2016 ASGS

The completion of the move to the Address Register in February 2019 completes the transition of the sample to the 2016 Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS). The changes between the 2011 ASGS and 2016 ASGS at the SA4 level are minor, with one key exception. The 2016 ASGS supports the ‘WA outback’ being split into ‘WA outback – North’ and ‘WA outback – South’.

The ABS is still assessing whether Labour Force data can support estimates for these two regions. In the meantime, these regions will continue to be published as ‘WA Outback (North and South)’. The ABS has not revised Labour Force data for any of the changes at the SA4 level.


REVIEW OF DETAILED LABOUR FORCE DATA - QUARTERLY EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT AND SECTOR DATA

The ABS is currently reviewing the usage of Labour Force data contained within the detailed monthly and quarterly releases (6291.0.55.001 and 6291.0.55.003), with an initial focus on quarterly educational attainment data and quarterly public and private sector data.

As part of this review, the ABS has explored the feasibility of producing information on public and private sector employment in the Australian Labour Account. For further information on this, including some illustrative estimates, can be found at:
Labour Account Australia, Quarterly Experimental Estimates, December 2018 (cat. no. 6150.0.55.003).



The ABS is keen to hear from users of educational attainment and sector data, at labour.statistics@abs.gov.au, including how you use the data, the extent to which current data meet your requirements, and whether sector data would be a useful addition to the Australian Labour Account.


UPDATE ON THE RELEASE OF 6224.0.55.001

The ABS was due to release the Labour Force, Australia: Labour Force Status and Other Characteristics of Families (cat. no. 6224.0.55.001) on 27 September 2018, with annual data up to June 2018.

During the quality assurance of the 2018 data and the recent time series, the ABS identified that there was a greater level of variability in the weighted estimates for some of the less common family and household types (particularly multi-family households), and therefore opted to delay the release till 2019.

The ABS has identified an issue with some family coding, which is affecting a range of key family estimates - particularly changes between June 2015 and June 2017. The issue is also impacting, to a lesser extent, on some variables in the four "relationship in household" products in Labour Force, Australia, Detailed – Electronic Delivery (cat. no. 6291.0.55.001) – including pivot tables FM1-FM4, as well as the first time series spreadsheet in that release, which contains estimates by social marital status.

The 2019 publication will contain data for both June 2018 and June 2019. Revised data for the 2015-2017 period, will be released with a complete time series with the release of June 2020 data. The ABS apologises for this delay. Should you have any questions regarding this data, please contact us at labour.statistics@abs.gov.au.


ROUNDING

Estimates of changes in the commentary have been calculated using un-rounded estimates, and may be different from, but are more accurate than, movement obtained from the rounded estimates. Graphs also depict un-rounded estimates.


SAMPLING ERROR

The estimates in this publication are based on a sample survey. Published estimates and movements are subject to sampling variability. Standard errors give a measure of sampling variability. The interval bounded by two standard errors is the 95% confidence interval, which provides a way of looking at the variability inherent in estimates. There is a 95% chance that the true value of the estimate lies within that interval.

	Monthly change		95% Confidence interval
Total Employment	25 700		-35 100	to	86 500
Total Unemployment	17 100		-20 500	to	54 700
Unemployment rate	0.1 pts		-0.1 pts	to	0.3 pts
Participation rate	0.1 pts		-0.3 pts	to	0.5 pts

INQUIRIES

For further information about these and related statistics, email client.services@abs.gov.au or contact the National Information and Referral Service on 1300 135 070.