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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 Employee Earnings, Benefits and Trade Union Membership Survey collects a range of information about employees, including weekly earnings of employees, their leave entitlements (paid holiday, paid sick, paid long service and paid maternity/paternity leave), superannuation contributions made by employer on behalf of employee, benefits and trade union membership. 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 the distribution of both weekly earnings and employment benefits across employees. Data are used in the development and review of wages and labour market policies, and in wage negotiation processes. The survey is the only reliable source of data on the distribution of trade union members by socio-demographic and labour force characteristics.

The Employee Earnings, Benefits and Trade Union Membership (EEBTUM) Survey is conducted annually in August as a supplement to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) monthly Labour Force Survey (LFS). The main products from the survey are the publication, Employee Earnings, Benefits and Trade Union Membership, Australia (cat. no. 6310.0), time series spreadsheets and a confidentialised unit record file (released every two years).

TIMELINESS

The publication and time series spreadsheets are released approximately nine months after the completion of enumeration in August. In applicable years, the confidentialised unit record file is released approximately 12 months after enumeration. The Employee Earnings, Benefits and Trade Union Membership Survey will be conducted again in August 2011.

ACCURACY

The LFS sample size in August 2010 was approximately 32% higher than the sample size in August 2009. This is due to re-instatement of sample that was reduced from Labour Force Survey (LFS) and supplementary surveys from July 2008 to November 2009. Detailed information about the sample re-instatement is provided in Information Paper: Labour Force Survey Sample Design, Nov 2007 (Third edition) (cat. no. 6269.0).

Estimates from the Employee Earnings, Benefits and Trade Union Membership Survey are subject to sampling and non-sampling errors. The Employee Earnings, Benefits and Trade Union Membership Survey was designed primarily to provide estimates at the Australia level. Broad estimates are available for state and 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 in the publication are available in the Technical Note.

COHERENCE

The ABS has been conducting the Employee Earnings, Benefits and Trade Union Membership Survey since 1999. Prior to 1999 this publication was titled Weekly Earnings of Employees (Distribution), Australia (cat. no. 6310.0). Key changes made to the Employee Earnings, Benefits and Trade Union Membership Survey include:

• The 2009 Employee Benefits module that captured information on employment benefits received in the last 12 months was not collected in 2010. As a result a number of data items presented in the 2009 publication are not available in the 2010 publication.
  
• From 2009, additional information, relating to the number of hours that a respondent's last pay period covered in their main job, was used in the imputation process.
  
• A new population, 'Employees who were trade union members', is included from 2009. this population provides information about employees who were members of a trade union, not necessarily in connection with their main job.
  
• The 2009 Employee Benefits module of the EEBTUM survey was redeveloped to better capture information on current employment benefits received in the last 12 months, including transport to and from work, communication and/or IT devices and child care, as well as salary sacrifice arrangements.
  
• In 2007, a change was made to the concept of earnings being measured to include amounts salary sacrificed. Employees are now asked to include salary sacrifice when estimating their earnings. In previous years this was not the case.
  
• Since August 2004, imputation has been used for cases where main job or second job earnings were not provided by the respondent. The current imputation method has been used since the 2005 survey.
  
• A change was made in 2002 to the method used to determine whether an employee works full-time or part-time in their main job.
  
• Generally, revisions are made to population benchmarks after each five-yearly Census of Population and Housing (Census), however revisions were made to the population benchmarks from July 2010, including those used for the 2010 Employee Earnings, Benefits and Trade Union Membership Survey, to reflect revisions to Estimated Resident Population.
  

• Australian Labour Market Statistics (cat. no. 6105.0) - refer to Appendix 2 for past articles.
• Australian Social Trends (cat. no. 4102.0) - refer to the Cumulative list of articles for past articles.
• Year Book, Australia (cat. no. 1301.0) - refer to the 'Labour' chapter.