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

Manufacturing Indicators, Australia (cat. no. 8229.0) brings together a number of indicators (monthly, quarterly and annual) providing timeseries information on the performance of the Australian manufacturing industry.

TIMELINESS

Manufacturing Indicators, Australia is released quarterly. As the data are compiled from existing collections, not all data in the tables may be updated each quarter. The monthly data in Table 1 are updated for each release and contains the latest monthly data available at time of publication. The quarterly data in Table 2 are updated for each release. The annual data in Table 3 are updated when new or revised data is available.

ACCURACY

When interpreting the results of a survey it is important to take into account factors that may affect the reliability of the estimates. There are two types of error associated with sample surveys, sampling and non-sampling errors. Estimates in this publication are subject to both non-sampling and sampling errors.

Non-sampling errors may arise as a result of errors in the reporting, recording or processing of the data and can occur even if there is a complete enumeration of the population. These errors can be introduced through inadequacies in the questionnaire, treatment of non-response, inaccurate reporting by respondents, errors in the application of survey procedures, incorrect recording of answers and errors in data capture and processing.

The difference between estimates obtained from a sample of businesses, and the estimates that would have been produced if the information had been obtained from all businesses, is called sampling error.

The majority of data in this publication are taken from various ABS sources. As such, users are encouraged to refer to these sources at the foot of the tables, and the Explanatory Notes and other related information (available from the ABS website) for the data sources of interest to them, as these provide detailed information about the accuracy, reliability, comparability, classifications and scope & coverage of the data which appears in Manufacturing Indicators, Australia (cat. no. 8229.0).

COHERENCE

The June quarter 2005 was the first release of Manufacturing Indicators (release data was 21 November 2005). The indicators have remained the same with the exception of "Return on assets" which was not published after the 2002-03 reference year (and subsequently discontinued from the March quarter 2006 release of 8229.0)

INTERPRETABILITY

Publications from which the data is sourced are:

Non-ABS

Table 1
Australian Industry Group - Australian Performance of Manufacturing Index

ABS Publications

Table 2
5676.0 Business Indicators, Australia
5625.0 Private New Capital Expenditure and Expected Expenditure, Australia
6291.0.55.003 Labour Force, Australia, Detailed, Quarterly

Table 3
5204.0 Australian System of National Accounts
5368.0 International Trade in Goods and Services, Australia (data by request)
1350.0 Australian Economic Indicators
6427.0 Producer Price Indexes, Australia
8155.0 Australian Industry.
(Note: 8221.0 Manufacturing Industry, Australia is discontinued and was last published on 26 August 2008 in respect of reference year 2006-07. Manufacturing Census data in respect of 2006-07 was released on 14 April 2009 as an additional data cube attached to 8221.0).
8104.0 Research and Experimental Development, Businesses, Australia

ACCESSIBILITY

A range of standard products relating to the manufacturing industry are available, see the Manufacturing Theme page for details on current and up coming releases with relevance to the manufacturing industry. For more information please contact the National Information and Referral Service.