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 (EEBTUM) 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.
The survey is a valuable source of data for comparing and analysing the distribution of both weekly earnings and employment benefits of 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.
TIMELINESS
The Employee Earnings, Benefits and Trade Union Membership (EEBTUM) Survey is conducted annually, in August, as a supplement to the monthly Labour Force Survey (LFS). Results from this survey are released the following year after the completion of enumeration in the publication Employee Earnings, Benefits and Trade Union Membership (cat. no. 6310.0).
ACCURACY
Estimates from the EEBTUM survey are subject to sampling and non-sampling errors. Relative standard error (RSE) is a measure of the size of the sampling error affecting an 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.
The EEBTUM survey was designed primarily to provide estimates at the Australia level. Broad estimates are available for state and capital city/balance, though users should exercise caution when using estimates at this level because of the presence of high sampling errors. RSEs for all estimates in the publication are available in the Technical Note.
COHERENCE
While the LFS provides the official estimate of persons in the labour force, the EEBTUM survey provides further information on the employment benefits, earnings and trade union membership of employees from the LFS. Some summary information is also collected in the Labour Force Survey on a quarterly basis.
The ABS has been conducting EEBTUM since 1999. Key changes to the EEBTUM include:
- revision of population benchmarks;
- imputation;
- changes to data items in 2012; and
- other changes to the Employee Earnings, Benefits and Trade Union Membership survey.
Prior to 1999 this publication was titled
Weekly Earnings of Employees (Distribution), Australia (cat. no. 6310.0).
For more information on changes to the survey see
Chapter 21.2 of
Labour Statistics: Concepts, Sources and Methods (cat. no. 6102.0.55.001).
Employee earnings measures are also available from
Average Weekly Earnings, Australia (cat. no. 6302.0) and
Employee Earnings and Hours, Australia (cat. no. 6306.0).
INTERPRETABILITY
The Employee Earnings, Benefits and Trade Union Membership publication contains tables and a Summary of Findings to aid interpretation of the results of the survey. Detailed Explanatory Notes, 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:
ACCESSIBILITY
The main product from the survey is released electronically via the ABS website as a PDF publication and spreadsheets,
Employee Earnings, Benefits and Trade Union Membership (cat. no. 6310.0)
. Additional data may be available on request (subject to data quality). For a list of data items available see Appendix 1 of the publication. Note that detailed data can be subject to high relative standard errors, and in some cases, may result in data being confidentialised.
Additional tables in spreadsheet format with time series data are also available from the ABS website.
For further information about these or related statistics, contact the National Information and Referral Centre on 1300 135 070 or the Labour Supplementary Survey Section in Canberra on (02) 6252 7206 or by email to <labour.statistics@abs.gov.au>.
Quality Declaration 
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