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Meetings, conferences and presentations

In mid 2008 the ABS undertook an environmental scan and situation analysis, which was then discussed with the ABS' Labour Statistics Advisory Group. The process revealed several priority labour market issues for Australia, including participation, the ageing of the labour force, unemployment and underutilisation, skills shortages, the changing workplace relations environment, balancing work and family, and remuneration.

The overwhelming response from the Labour Statistics Advisory Group was that the ABS' first priority in meeting the challenges of measuring these issues is to ensure data quality. This confirms the need for ABS to continue to pursue methodological improvements, while continuing to use innovative techniques to aid the understanding of complex issues.

These priorities were reinforced at the NatStats 08 Conference and the Australian Labour Market Research Workshop, which were both held in late 2008. Speakers and researchers highlighted several imperatives for statistical agencies:
• informing fast-paced policy decisions by anticipating data needs;
• tapping into the potential of administrative data;
• creating longitudinal datasets that enable understanding of policy outcomes;
• ensuring high quality national, state and regional estimates;
• enabling international comparisons;
• communicating issues rather than numbers; and
• using data visualisation tools to improve the way statistics are communicated.

Other recent highlights include:

December 2008 - ABS attended the 18th International Conference of Labour Statisticians to discuss and adopt international statistical standards on two topics, Child Labour and Working Time; and to discuss and provide guidelines for future work on the measurement of decent work, indicators of labour underutilisation, and statistics on volunteer work. This follows on from ABS' participation in the Meeting of Experts on Statistics in April 2008.

December 2008 - ABS presented a paper on labour force underutilisation at the Centre of Full Employment and Equity conference. The paper introduced the new quarterly labour force underutilisation rate, which replaces the previous annual rate.

October 2008 - ABS submission to the House of Representatives' Standing Committee on Employment and Workplace Relations' Inquiry into pay equity and associated issues related to increasing female participation in the workforce. The submission advised the Standing Committee of relevant measures to inform their Inquiry.

July 2008 - ABS published an article on maternity leave entitlements in Australia. The article was produced to meet the statistical needs of the Productivity Commission's inquiry into paid maternity, paternity and parental leave and published in the July 2008 edition of Australian Labour Market Statistics (cat. no. 6105).