The Pregnancy and Employment Transitions (cat. no. 4913.0) publication presents information on birth mothers of a child living with them for which a child was under two years of age at the time of interview in November 2017. In situations where women had more than one child under the age of 2, data was collected in respect of the employment transitions of women around the most recent birth (i.e. the youngest child).

Data collected about women's job during pregnancy; first job started or returned to after the birth; current job details; partners job while the woman was pregnant; partners first job started or returned to after the birth; and partners current job details are cross-classified by characteristics such as income, industry and occupation and demographic characteristics.

TIMELINESS

The Pregnancy and Employment Transitions Survey (PaETS) is conducted every 6 years as a supplement to the monthly Labour Force Survey. Results from this survey are released the following year after the completion of enumeration.

ACCURACY

Estimates from the PaETS are subject to sampling and non-sampling errors. Relative standard error (RSE) is a measure of the size of the sampling error affecting the 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 because of 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. Due to the small sample size, this release has several cells with Relative Standard Errors between 25% and 50%. There are also numerous cells with a Relative Standard Error of greater than 50%. The ABS suggests a greater degree of caution be applied when analysing these data. More information on Standard Errors is available in the Technical Note of this release.

COHERENCE

While the LFS provides the official estimate of persons in the labour force, the PaETs provides further information on the job characteristics of these people who are the birth mothers of a child under 2 years. Summary information is also collected in the Labour Force Survey on a quarterly basis.

The ABS first conducted the PaETS in November 2005. The November 2011 survey collected additional information on women's employment transitions during pregnancy; on starting or returning to work; and job details at November 2011. The survey also collected information on leave arrangements of women and partners for the birth of the child; discrimination in the workplace during pregnancy; work arrangements on return to work; whether women had a partner during pregnancy; and the work transitions of these partners.

Since PaETS was run in November 2011, there has been some significant changes to the Labour Force Supplementary Surveys program. The 2011 Pregnancy and Employment Transitions survey was run in conjunction with Forms of Employment (FOES) and data from FOES was used in PaETS. Changes needed to be made to the 2017 Pregnancy and Employment Transitions to incorporate the relevant FOES items into the questionnaire. The questionnaire used in 2017 can be found under the downloads tab.

INTERPRETABILITY

The Pregnancy and Employment Transitions, Australia (cat. no. 4913) publication contains tables with footnoted data and a Summary of Findings to aid interpretation of the results of the survey. Detailed Explanatory Notes, Technical Note and Glossary also provide information on terminology, classifications and other technical aspects associated with these statistics.

ACCESSIBILITY

Pregnancy and Employment Transitions, Australia (cat no. 4913.0) is released electronically via the ABS website as Data Cubes in spreadsheet format. Additional data my 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: PAETS 2017 Populations and Data item list

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