Jobs in Australia methodology

This publication provides information about the number and nature of filled jobs in Australia, the people who hold them, and their employers. 

A job is a relationship between an employed person and their employing enterprise. This can be a relationship between an employee and an employer or between an owner manager of an unincorporated enterprise and their own enterprise. Owner managers of incorporated enterprises have not been identified in the underlying data and are included in the employee population.

It includes information about multiple job-holding and employment in local areas. 

The job counts in this publication differ from the filled job estimates from other data sources such as the Australian Labour Account and the Labour Force Australia. The Jobs in Australia data sourced from the Linked Employer Employee Dataset (LEED) provides insights into all jobs held throughout the year, while the Labour Account data provides the number of filled jobs at a point-in-time each quarter, and Labour Force Survey data measures the number of people employed each month. 

Data is provided for over 2,000 regions, at the SA4, SA3, SA2, LGA and GCCSA levels. Aggregate data is available by state and territory and national estimates.

A graphical representation of the estimates for each state and territory is available by local government area based on user demand and stakeholder feedback. These graphical representations are also available by SA2 if requested.

Jobs in Australia is a rich dataset which includes 16 million records each financial year enabling data to be provided at a national, state & regional level. The data contains annual information from 2011-12 through to 2016-17, and contains over 100 million individual records.

The statistics in this publication are produced from a Linked Employer Employee Dataset (LEED), using Australian Tax Office administrative data linked to ABS Business Longitudinal Analytical Data Environment

Data in previous years have not been revised. 

New tables (7-14) contain graphical representation of the estimates for each state and territory by local government area. These graphical representations are also available by SA2 if requested.

The data in this release are compiled from the recently developed Linked Employer Employee Dataset (LEED). The LEED analyses more than 100 million tax records over six consecutive years between 2011-12 and 2016-17, and provides information for over 2,200 different regions based on a person’s residence.

The LEED is a cross-sectional database. It is comprised of a person file, a job file, and an employer file. These are discussed in more detail below. 

Employed persons are linked to employers via jobs. A person can have a number of jobs throughout the year with one or many employers, some of which may be held concurrently with others.

The LEED includes person and employer level information provided to the ABS by the ATO and the Registrar of the Australian Business Register (ABR).

The LEED includes tax data supplied by the ATO to the ABS under the Taxation Administration Act 1953, which requires that such data is only used for the purpose of administering the Census and Statistics Act 1905. Any discussion of data limitations or weaknesses is in the context of using the data for statistical purposes, and is not related to the ability of the data to support the ATO's core operational requirements.

The tax forms and instructions that are used to collect the underlying tax data used in this publication can be found on the ATO website. Information about business registration can be found on the ABR website.

The LEED includes ABR data supplied by the Registrar to the ABS under A New Tax System (Australian Business Number) Act 1999, which requires that such data is only used for the purpose of carrying out functions of the ABS. Any discussion of data limitations or weaknesses is in the context of using the data for statistical purposes, and is not related to the ability of the data to support the ABR’s core operational requirements.

LEED includes data from the Business Longitudinal Analysis Data Environment (BLADE). The BLADE combines ABS Business Register data, business tax data and information from ABS surveys with data about the use of government programs. Survey and program data is not included in the cross-sectional sub-set used in this publication. Information from the ABS’ business profiling process is included on the BLADE and used in the compilation of the LEED.

Legislative requirements to ensure privacy and secrecy of these data have been followed. In accordance with the Census and Statistics Act 1905, results have been confidentialised to ensure they are not likely to enable identification of a particular person or organisation. All personal information is handled in accordance with the Australian Privacy Principles contained in the Privacy Act 1988.

The LEED includes information about all employers recorded in the BLADE and Australia's personal income tax data sets, regardless of their residency. It also includes all sources of income, regardless of whether the income provider resides within Australia's economic territory.

The LEED includes data for all persons who either submitted an individual tax return (ITR) or individuals who had a payment summary issued by an employer and then remitted to the ATO. Employees who did not submit a tax return and have not provided their Tax File Number to their employer will not appear in the LEED. Owner managers of unincorporated enterprises (OMUEs) who did not submit an ITR are also excluded.

The ABS receives data from the ATO approximately 16 months after the end of the financial year. This data then requires processing time to construct BLADE and to produce a coherent and clean persons dataset. These factors contribute to the long delay between the end of the financial year and the publication of statistics from the LEED.

Because taxation data may be submitted to the ATO after the ITR cut-off date, it may not be available at the time the ATO provides data to the ABS and is only added in future provisions. As such, annual data in the LEED can become more complete over time. This is estimated to have a slightly greater impact on the self-employed population than on the larger employee and employer populations, and a negligible impact overall.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) acknowledges the continuing support of the Australian Tax Office (ATO) in compiling these statistics. 

Each cross-sectional person file contains data for all persons who either submitted an ITR or who were identifiable on a payment summary in the reference year. Each record includes de-identified demographic and geographic data, and aggregate income information.

Employed persons may be either employees (including owner manager of incorporated enterprises (OMIEs)), owner managers of unincorporated enterprises (OMUEs), or both. 

Employees are identified by the presence of aggregate employee income and at least one linked employee job.

Employees who have not submitted an ITR but who have provided their Tax File Number to their employer are imputed from PAYG payment summary data. 

OMUEs are identified by the presence of any of the own unincorporated business income types and a linked OMUE job.

Tax lodgers who are not employees or owner managers are included on the person file to support statistical analysis that requires a more complete view of the tax lodger population.

The employer file contains all employers in a job relationship with someone on the person file at any point during the reference year.

An economic units model is used to describe the characteristics of employers and the structural relationships between related organisational units. This model defines organisations by enterprise group, type of activity, location and legal entities.

The ABS profiles large, complex and economically significant organisations, and structures them to accord with the economic units model. Legal entities that are under common ownership or control make up an enterprise group, and are included in the profiled population. Legal entities are usually represented by a single Australian Business Number (ABN). Enterprise groups are broken up into one or multiple type of activity units, each of which represents their economic activity within a specific industry subdivision. The remainder of ABN registrants are assumed to have simple structures and are regarded as a single legal entity. These units are known as the non-profiled population. The two populations are mutually exclusive and cover all organisations in Australia which have registered for an ABN. 

For further information on the economic units model, refer to Australian System of National Accounts: Concepts, Sources and Methods (cat. no. 5216.0, paragraphs 4.25 to 4.37).

In the LEED, an employer is any legal entity in the non-profiled population that is linked to a job; and any type of activity unit in the profiled population that is linked to a job.

Most employers are present in BLADE, however the LEED employer population also includes unincorporated entities, which are identified in personal income tax data and are not otherwise included in BLADE or cannot be identified in BLADE. Industry and several other employer variables are not available for these unincorporated entities.

The jobs file is a complete list of the job relationships held at any time during the reference year.

The jobs file is constructed primarily from PAYG payment summary data. PAYG payment summaries describe the payments made to an individual by an employer within a financial year. Payment period start and end dates are included with this information. Conceptually, payment summary data should include most employee/employer job relationships. OMUE jobs are derived from ITR data and added to the jobs file, some of these link to businesses in BLADE.

In some cases a synthetic employee job record has been created based on information in the person file. This has occurred when a person has recorded wage or salary information that cannot be identified in payment summary data. In some cases an employee job may not be able to be linked to an employing organisation due to recording errors or missing information. 

A person can hold several jobs during the year, either concurrently (as a multiple job-holder) or non-concurrently. For a person who is an employee of several employers, each relationship is listed as a separate job. While a person may own and manage more than one enterprise, due to data limitations only one self-employment job can be recorded for any OMUE. In the LEED, an OMUE can hold other jobs as an employee. 

PAYG payment summary start and end dates are used to determine the start and end of a job relationship, to identify concurrent job-holding, and to determine the duration of the job. These dates are known to have high measurement error rates, which are likely to inflate job and concurrent job counts. Some of this error may be due to misinterpretation and recording errors, but it is also expected that payroll system and report design have an influence.

Some treatments have been applied to address over counts of jobs or concurrent job-holding, including: 

• in cases where a person has received several PAYG payment summaries from the same employer, and the time between the end of the first payment summary and the start of the next payment summary is 31 days or less, this is counted as a single job.
• in cases where a person has received several PAYG payment summaries from different employers, they are only considered to be concurrent if they overlap by more than 31 days.
• in cases where a person has more than 10 jobs, those within the same industry sub-division are counted as a single job.

These treatments are aimed at minimising the impact of administrative errors while also reflecting a reasonably accurate view of differing job structures.

The LEED jobs file does not capture voluntary jobs and unpaid contributing family worker jobs.

ABS data integration practices comply with the High Level Principles for Data Integration Involving Commonwealth Data for Statistical and Research Purposes. 

The LEED uses deterministic integration. Jobs are linked to legal entities using ABNs. 

Where a legal entity is part of the profiled population, the assignment of an employed person to a type of activity unit may be modelled. This occurs when the legal entity is part of an enterprise group with more than one type of activity unit.

Modelled assignment to type of activity units is based on a logistic regression model developed using 2016 Census data. The model references independent variables common to both Census and personal income tax data, including sex, age, occupation, and region of usual residence. These are used to predict the industry of employment, which conceptually aligns to a type of activity unit. 

Where an employee has multiple job relationships with the same reporting ABN in an enterprise group, each job relationship is assigned to the same type of activity unit.

Based on the model, each job record is assigned a probability of being in any of the type of activity units present in the employing enterprise group. Referencing these probabilities, iterative random assignment is undertaken until employment benchmarks are met. Benchmarks are based on Quarterly Business Indicators Survey (QBIS) data. Where a unit falls out of scope of QBIS, BLADE employment levels are substituted where possible, otherwise no benchmarking is done.

In this publication, the main job held by a person is the job in which they received the highest employment income. Using income or earnings to identify a person's main job differs from ABS household surveys, which define a person's main job as the job in which the most hours are usually worked. 

In this publication, multiple job holders are persons who have two or more concurrent jobs at any point during the financial year. Due to data limitations, concurrency cannot be determined for self-employment jobs and they have been excluded from concurrent job counts. 

The tendency for employees who leave a job during the year to be retained in pay systems until the end of the financial year results in some jobs being incorrectly identified as concurrent. 

Any person with one or more job at any point during the year is considered to be an employed person. Employed persons can be employees (including OMIEs), OMUEs, or both. 

An employee is an employed person who holds a job with a public or private employer and receives remuneration in wages, salary, on a commission basis (with or without a retainer), tips, piece rates, or payment in kind. Employees in this publication are identified through the receipt of any of these types of payments as recorded on an ITR or on a PAYG payment summary.

OMIEs have not been identified separately to employees and so are included in employee counts.

Attributed personal services income is also counted as employee income, however data limitations mean that employer relationships for employees with this type of income are not able to be established.

Employees include owner managers of incorporated enterprises. Incorporated enterprises are business entities registered as a separate legal entity to its members or owners (also known as limited liability companies). These employees cannot be separately identified in this publication.

OMUEs are identified through ITRs, where a person has recorded business or personal services income (other than attributed personal services income). Where the person has recorded the ABN of their unincorporated enterprise, this may be able to be linked to a BLADE record. In cases where no BLADE record is identified, an employer record is created from the information on the ITR. These records contain limited information.

The conceptual definition of employment income used in this publication is a component of personal income as described in Standards for Income Variables (cat. no. 1287.0), and is based on the international standards agreed by the International Conference of Labour Statisticians which are explained in the Canberra Group Handbook on Household Income Statistics, Second Edition (2011).

Employment income in this publication is limited to income that is conceptually consistent with the standard, but has some limitations as a result of using administrative data. A more complete and conceptually accurate view of personal income from all sources is published in Household Income and Wealth (cat. no. 6523.0).

Adjusted employee income per job is a supplementary view of income per job that accounts for the length of time an employee job was held. Because many jobs are held for less than the entire financial year, per job employee income is low relative to employee income. Adjusted employee income per job is designed to partially correct this by emulating an 'annual salary' for each job.

For example, an employee who earns $50,000 per year but changes jobs half way though the year may have an employee income of $50,000 but a per job employee income of $25,000 (for both jobs, assuming they are identical). Their Adjusted employee income per job will be $50,000, which is the assumed amount each job would have paid, should the employee have held it for the entire year.

Adjusted employee income per job is calculated by dividing regular payments (the following items on an individual non-business payment summary: 'gross payments', 'total allowances', 'reportable fringe benefits amount', and 'reportable employer superannuation contributions') received on a per job basis by the number of days the job was held. This figure is then multiplied by the number of days in the reference year. Irregular payments ('lump sum A and B') are then added to this figure.

Adjusted employee income per job is available for employee jobs only. It is not calculated for jobs held for only 1 day or for any jobs for which duration of job cannot be calculated.

Occupation in main job is recorded for each employee in reference to their main job only. This is reported by an employee or their tax agent in relation to the occupation of the job with the highest wage or salary. The ATO code reported occupations according to the Australian and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations, 2013 (ANZSCO) (cat. no. 1220.0) with some minor exceptions. Supplementary coding used by the ATO is subsequently concorded to ANZSCO by the ABS. Occupation in main job cannot be determined for a person who is only employed as an OMUE. In cases where the person’s main job is as an OMUE but where they have one or more secondary employee jobs, occupation will refer to the main employee job. 

For employers in the non-profiled population, industry information in LEED is based on information provided by the registrant to the Australian Business Register. This is usually completed at the time of registration and may not be updated.

For employers in the profiled population, industry is based on information collected by the ABS. Industry is determined through the profiling process for each major activity in which a business operates and is recorded at the type of activity level. Profiling information is back and forward-cast in BLADE, and this impacts on the industry information in this publication.

All geographic variables are based on a person’s home address as reported on their ITR form. Addresses are coded to the Australian Statistical Geography Standard.

If a geography variable is missing on the ITR, if possible it is imputed from the individual's most recent PAYG payment summary.

All personal income tax statistics were provided to LEED analysts in de-identified form with no home address or date of birth. Addresses were coded to the Australian Statistical Geography Standard and date of birth was converted to an age at 30 June of the reference year prior to data provision.

To minimise the risk of identifying individuals in aggregate statistics, perturbation has been applied. Perturbation involves small random adjustment of the statistics and is considered the most satisfactory technique for avoiding the release of identifiable statistics, while maximising the range of information that can be released. These adjustments have a negligible impact on the underlying pattern of the statistics. Some cells have also been suppressed due to low counts.

For further information about these and other statistics, please contact the National Information and Referral Service on 1300 135 070.

The following table outlines the content of each publication table from Jobs in Australia.

Labour statistics are some of Australia’s most important economic and social statistics. Put simply, they provide information about people and their participation in the labour market, their success in finding employment, their earnings and other benefits, their type of work, their working hours and conditions.

Given the importance of high quality information on the Australian labour market, the ABS produces a broad range of labour statistics, drawn from a wide range of different sources. Some of these sources are very well known, such as the monthly Labour Force Survey, but others are less well known – particularly new collections like the annual Jobs in Australia and the quarterly Labour Account.

A simple way of visualising this is to consider that ABS labour statistics are drawn from four key “pillars” of data, each of which is a bit different, but which provide complementary insights into the labour market.

Each of these pillars – the two traditional sources of household and business surveys, and the two more recent pillars of administrative data based statistics and Labour Account - provides important and unique insights to enable Australians to better understand their labour market.

A household survey approaches individual households to complete questions about their individual, family or household circumstances.

The key household survey that provides vital information about Australia’s labour market is the Labour Force Survey, and its related supplementary surveys.

Business surveys collect a broad range of information from businesses, including their performance, financial position or about jobs and employees.

Key business surveys with a labour market focus include Job Vacancies, Employee Earnings and Hours Average Weekly Earnings and the Wage Price Index.

Administrative data refers to information maintained by governments and other entities that is made available to the ABS for statistical purposes. It includes data used for registrations, transactions and record keeping, usually during the delivery of a service.

The ABS publishes employment information from the Linked Employer Employee Dataset (LEED), using Australian Tax Office information and ABS data. As a result, the LEED includes more than 100 million tax records over six consecutive years between 2011-12 and 2016-17, and provides information for over 2,200 different regions based on a person’s usual residence.

The Labour Account brings together data from separate administrative, business, and household sources, adjusting and confronting the various sources until a coherent picture of the labour market is established. It provides data on the number of employed persons, the number of jobs, hours worked and income earned for each industry. It provides the best labour market estimates for the 19 industry divisions each quarter and 86 industries annually.

Often there is only a single statistical data source on the ABS website that will include the information that you are after. However, for many labour market topics it is often the case that the ABS produces multiple statistics, each drawn from a different data source to enable different types of analysis. They provide important, complementary economic and social insights into the labour market, which is large, complex and dynamic.

It is therefore important to be guided by what you are looking to understand about the labour market. Is it to understand a topic where:

• demographic characteristics are important or it may related to an activity outside of employment? Household surveys are often useful for this.
• specific employer or payroll information is important? Business surveys are often useful for this.
• detailed sub-population or geographic information is important? This is usually best sourced from administrative data, or the five-yearly Census.
• a comprehensive ‘best estimate’ of key labour market indicators (based on reconciled information from all of the available data sources) is important? The Labour Account Is designed to provide this.

For example, in seeking to understand how many people are employed in jobs in Australia, you could use statistics from:

• Monthly Labour Force – which provides a timely indicator on changes in employment, unemployment and underemployment, including analysis by personal characteristics such as sex, age, occupation and employment status.
• The quarterly Labour Account – which is the best source of headline information on employment by industry. It provides an estimate of the number of jobs, hours worked, and associated labour income.
• The annual Jobs in Australia – which provides granular information on all the job relationship for more than 2,200 different regions across Australia. This rich dataset is based on more than 100 million individual records which allow for micro-data analysis of the Australian labour market.

​​​​​​​Another common example is seeking to understand changes in wages over time, where you could use statistics from:

• Quarterly Wage Price Index - which measures changes in the price of labour in the Australian labour market. In a similar manner to the CPI, the WPI follows price changes in a fixed "basket" of jobs and is therefore not affected by changes in quality and quantity of work..
• The twice yearly Average Weekly Earnings - which provides data on average wages by industry, which provides insights into compositional changes in earnings over time.
• The two yearly Employee Earnings and Hours - which provides detailed data on methods of setting pay, hours paid for and detailed distributional earnings information.
• The annual Characteristics of Employment – which provides earnings by detailed socio-demographic and other characteristics.
• The quarterly Compensation of Employees measure in the National Accounts and quarterly measure of labour income in the Labour Account – which provide aggregate earnings measures.

Below is a list of some of the key labour statistics collections, organised into the pillars. In addition to improving the visibility of all of the available labour statistics, the ABS is also exploring how to better organise labour market information around themes and topics. This is being actively explored as part of the design of its new website, which will be launched in June 2020.

Labour Force, Australia (cat. no. 6202.0) - Monthly
Labour Force, Australia, Detailed - Electronic Delivery (cat. no. 6291.0.55.001) – Monthly
Labour Force, Australia, Detailed, Quarterly (cat. no. 6291.0.55.003)
Characteristics of Employment, Australia (cat. no. 6333.0) - Annually
Participation, Job Search and Mobility, Australia (cat. no. 6226.0) – Annually
Education and Work, Australia (cat. no. 6227.0) - Annually
Characteristics of Recent Migrants, Australia (cat. no. 6250.0) – 4 yearly
Barriers and Incentives to Labour Force Participation, Australia (cat. no. 6239.0) – 2 yearly
Retirement and Retirement Intentions, Australia (cat. no. 6238.0) – 2 yearly

Job Vacancies, Australia (cat. no. 6354.0) - Quarterly
Industrial Disputes, Australia (cat. no. 6321.0.55.001) - Quarterly
Average Weekly Earnings (cat. no. 6302.0) – 6 monthly
Employee Earnings and Hours, Australia (cat. no. 6306.0) – 2 yearly
Wage Price Index, Australia (cat. no. 6345.0) - Quarterly
Employment and Earnings, Public Sector, Australia (cat. no. 6248.0.55.002) - Annually
Australian Industry (cat. no. 8155.0) - Annually
Labour Costs, Australia (cat. no. 6348.0) – 5 yearly

Jobs in Australia (cat. no. 6160.0) - Annually
Estimates of Personal Income for Small Areas (cat. no. 6524.0.55.002) - Annually

Labour Account Australia (cat. no. 6150.0.55.003) - Quarterly

The ABS continues to strengthen the suite of labour market statistics, to ensure that Australia can effectively understand how its labour market, economy and society are changing over time and make informed decisions.