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ESTIMATION METHODS

There were two methods used to produce the experimental 'employed persons equivalent' estimates. The first method applied was to divide remuneration by mean annual earnings. This method was applied to the data acquired from WorkSafe to produce an employed persons equivalent.

As Comcare do not collect the same data as WorkSafe, a different methodology had to be applied which apportioned State based data to LGAs using distribution from Census 2006 working population data.

Both estimation methods are further detailed below.

WORKSAFE ESTIMATES

In order to derive the experimental estimates, an average wage per employee was derived from the EEBTUM survey (cat. no. 6310.0) and applied to the WorkSafe and Self-Insurer remuneration. Remuneration is the gross amount paid by the business to workers, before tax.

In the EEBTUM survey, weekly earnings are the reported amount of ‘last total pay’ (before taxation, salary sacrifice and other deductions had been made) from wage and salary jobs prior to the labour force interview being conducted. For persons paid other than weekly, earnings are converted to a weekly equivalent. No adjustment is made for any back payment of wage increases, prepayment of leave or bonuses. In 2007, a change was made to the concept of earnings being measured to include amounts salary sacrificed. Thus, salary sacrifice is not included in EEBTUM earnings estimates prior to 2007. Mean weekly earnings are then obtained by dividing the total earnings of a group by the number of employees in that group.

The experimental estimates utilised mean weekly earnings at the national level as a lower level geography of mean weekly earnings was not feasible due to high relative standard errors. The total employee figure was used, assuming that the distribution of full-time and part-time employees would be consistent between EEBTUM and WorkSafe for a given industry.

Mean weekly earnings by industry of main job were multiplied by 52 weeks to derive mean annual earnings for the production of the experimental estimates. The mean earnings reported in August of each year were applied backwards to the previous financial year. The employed persons equivalent estimate is remuneration divided by mean annual employee earnings.

COMCARE ESTIMATES

Comcare do not calculate insurance premiums at the workplace level, and as a result do not hold measures such as remuneration at this level. They also do not keep a register of all workplace locations for each business that appears on the list of Comcare insured employers.

Using the list of Comcare insured businesses active at 30 June 2011 supplied by Comcare, ABS matched these businesses, where possible, to the ABS Business Register to obtain business locations in Victoria, ANZSIC06 industry division and sub-division codes, and number of employees in Victoria for each business.

Where the ABS Business Register did not have Victorian workplace location information on a Comcare insured business, independent research of business websites was performed to obtain Victorian business addresses.

As the ANZSIC06 industry division and sub-division codes and the Victorian employee numbers obtained from the ABS Business Register were at the state level, not the workplace location level, a methodology was applied to apportion the state level records to locations within Victoria according to the corresponding industry distribution from the 2006 Census. That is, for any industry, proportions of employees were calculated for each LGA a business is located in, and these then applied to each employer's state-level employee count. The methodology also assumed a fixed variable of 2 employees per workplace location.

Note: these estimates were produced using 2006 Census data, as this was the most recent data available at the time.

where:

B_t is the Victorian total employee number for the business
L_n is the number of business locations
C_d is the 2006 Census industry distribution for the LGA
L_LGA is the number of business locations in the LGA

Example: Business A has 150 employees across 3 locations in Victoria:

Location	LGA	Census	Census %	Estimate
A	Brimbank	250	38	56.72
B	Wyndham	400	62	46.64
C	Wyndham	400	62	46.64

Given that businesses insured by Comcare tend to be federal government departments or their private competitors, the contribution of Comcare insured business was not distributed evenly across all industry classifications. For example, there were no businesses contained in the Comcare dataset coded to the following industries: agriculture, forestry and fishing, mining, wholesale trade, accommodation and food services, and education and training. The main industries Comcare contributed to were: public administration and safety, financial and insurance services as well as transport, postal and warehousing.

Care should be taken when interpreting the experimental estimates as employee estimates for Comcare insured businesses were only included in the 2010-11 reference period. Furthermore, the estimates of employees in Comcare insured businesses were derived using a different methodology than the estimates of employees in Self-Insuring or WorkCover insured businesses. Finally, the Victorian workplace locations identified for Comcare insured businesses active at 30 June 2011 is not exhaustive, but is as complete as ABS could achieve given the data collected by Comcare compared to data collected by WorkSafe Victoria.

INDUSTRY AGGREGATION

Metropolitan Melbourne

The experimental estimates for metropolitan Melbourne have been output as LGAs by industry divisions. The ANZSIC industries have been further aggregated as follows: