6226.0 - Participation, Job Search and Mobility, Australia, February 2016 Quality Declaration 
ARCHIVED ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 10/11/2016   
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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 Participation, Job Search and Mobility (PJSM) Survey presents information about participation, underemployment, marginal attachment, job mobility and job search. The collection of a range of socio-demographic and labour force characteristics makes the datasets produced from the survey extremely valuable for comparing and analysing a person's experience relating to job search, job change and increasing participation, 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.

TIMELINESS

The Participation, Job Search and Mobility survey was conducted in February 2016 as a supplement to the ABS monthly Labour Force Survey (LFS). Results from this survey are released in the publication Participation, Job Search and Mobility, Australia (cat. no. 6226.0).

ACCURACY

Estimates from the PJSM are subject to sampling and non-sampling errors. Relative standard error (RSE) is a measure of the size of the sampling error affecting and estimate, i.e. the error introduced by basing estimates on a sample of the population rather than the full population. Non-sampling errors are inaccuracies that occur due to imperfections in reporting by respondents and interviewers, and errors made in coding and processing data.

This publication was designed primarily to provide estimates at the Australia level. Broad estimates are available for state/territory and/or capital city/balance of state, though users should exercise caution when using estimates at this level because of the presence of high sampling errors. Relative Standard Errors for all estimates are available in the relevant Data Cube. More information on Standard Errors is available in the Technical Note of this release.

To minimise the risk of identifying individuals in aggregate statistics, a technique is used to randomly adjust cell values. This technique is called perturbation. Perturbation involves small random adjustment of the statistics and is considered the most satisfactory technique for avoiding the release of identifiable statistics while maximising the range of information that can be released. These adjustments have a negligible impact on the underlying pattern of the statistics. After perturbation, a given published cell value will be consistent across all tables. However, adding up cell values to derive a total will not necessarily give the same result as published totals.

For further information regarding the accuracy of the PJSM survey estimates see the Technical Note.

COHERENCE

This survey will inform on the following broad labour market issues - Labour force participation potential, underemployment and marginal attachment. as well as job search experience and labour mobility. This information can be cross classified by characteristics such as duration of job search, last job details, hours worked, industry and occupation as well as personal characteristics.

Care should be taken when comparing the estimates from 2016 PJSM survey with previous years topics as Persons Not In The Labour Force (PNILF) and Underemployed Workers (UEW) were previously collected in September, Job Search Experience (JSE) in July and Labour Mobility (LMOB) was collected in February. Collection of data from this combined survey was undertaken in February. The populations used in each may not be directly comparable.

For more information on the history of changes to PNILF, see the Explanatory Notes (cat. no. 6220.0).

For more information on the history of changes to UEW, see the Explanatory Notes (cat. no. 6265.0).

For more information on the history of changes to JSE, see the Explanatory Notes (cat. no. 6222.0).

For more information on the history of changes to LMOB, see the Explanatory Notes (cat. no. 6209.0).

INTERPRETABILITY

Contained within PJSM are Data Cubes with footnoted data to aid interpretation of the results of the survey, detailed Explanatory Notes, a Technical Note and a Glossary are also included providing information on the terminology, classifications and other technical aspects associated with these statistics.

Further commentary is often available through articles and data published in other ABS products, including:
DATA ACCESS

Participation, Job Search and Mobility, Australia (cat. no. 6226.0) is released electronically via the ABS website as Data Cubes in spreadsheet format. Additional data may be available on request (subject to data quality). Note that detailed data can be subject to high relative standard errors. Full details of data items for this survey are available from the Downloads tabs in Data Cube: PJSM 2016 Populations and Data items list.

For users who wish to undertake a more detailed analysis of the data, the survey microdata will be released through the TableBuilder product. For more details, refer to the TableBuilder information, Microdata, Participation, Job Search and Mobility, Australia (cat. no. 6226.0.00.001). For more information see About TableBuilder.

For more information about ABS data available on request, contact National Information and Referral Service in Canberra on 1300 135 070 or via email to <client.services@abs.gov.au>.