Weekly Payroll Jobs methodology

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Reference period
Week ending 9 December 2023
Released
17/01/2024

How data are collected

Source

The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) receives payroll information from employers with Single Touch Payroll (STP) enabled payroll and accounting software each time the employer runs its payroll. The ATO provides selected employer and job level data items from the STP system to the ABS to produce statistics.

Scope and coverage

The scope and coverage of these estimates are defined and constrained by the characteristics of the data sources from which these estimates are produced. As such, users should note that not all jobs in the Australian labour market are captured within these estimates.

Payroll jobs

Payroll jobs as reported to the ATO through STP are in scope of these estimates. All payroll jobholders regardless of age or Australian residency status are included. Persons reported via STP must hold either a Tax File Number (TFN) or an Australian Business Number (ABN).

A payroll job is a relationship between an employee and their employing enterprise, where the employee is paid in the reference week through STP-enabled payroll or accounting software and reported to the ATO. Where an employee is paid other than weekly, the established payment pattern is used to include payroll jobs paid in weeks outside the reference week.

A payroll job exists when a payment has been received for the reference period. Payments may relate to one or more of the following:

  • salary payments and allowances,
  • labour hire payments and foreign income,
  • the value of payments in kind (where a fringe benefit amount is recorded),
  • bonuses where they are reported in the same field as normal payments.

Payroll jobs reported via STP exclude owner managers of unincorporated enterprises (OMUEs), which are more prevalent in the Construction and Agriculture, forestry and fishing industries. 

Employers with 20 or more employees (large employers) commenced transition to STP reporting on 1 July 2018. Employers with less than 20 employees (small employers) began transitioning to STP on 1 July 2019. Any reporting concessions that were made available for small employers ended on 30 June 2021. At the time of this release, almost all large employers and eligible small employers are reporting through STP.

In addition, payroll jobs reported in the Defence Industry (ANZSIC Class 7600) are excluded from these estimates by the ABS to better align with other Labour estimates.

Other data sources

The STP data are enhanced through combining other administrative data held by the ABS (also sourced from the Australian taxation system).

Sex, age and residential state/territory variables are primarily sourced from Client Register data (supplied by ATO to the ABS as part of the transfer of Personal Income Tax data). Sex can only be sourced from Client Register data. When age and residential state/territory are not available from Client Register data, they are sourced from STP data. The ABS receives annual snapshots of de-identified Client Register data from the ATO, for use in the production of statistics.

Industry of activity, sector and employment size variables of the employing business are sourced from the ABS Business Register (ABSBR).  

Variables from the Client Register and the ABSBR are updated periodically on different timings. See the Updating characteristic variables section of How data are processed.

How data are processed

To produce estimates from STP data, several processes and treatments are applied.

Calendarisation

Imputation

Aggregation

Suppression

Creation of indexes

Aggregate adjustments

Updating characteristic variables

Inclusion of unknown characteristics

 

These estimates are also affected by the dynamic nature and source of data. The impact on accuracy and coherence with other ABS labour statistics are described below.

Accuracy

Coherence

How data are released

All estimates are presented for weeks ending on a Saturday. 

Summary of outputs

Each release contains payroll jobs indexes and percentage change movements. Estimates are available at the national, state and territory and Australian and New Zealand Standard Industry Classification (ANZSIC) division by selected jobholder and employer characteristics. ANZSIC subdivision estimates are also available in each release, but with no jobholder or employer characteristics. 

Levels of payroll jobs are not available for release. The payroll jobs index provides a measure of changes in payroll jobs over time since the week ending 14 March 2020. Information on levels for jobs are best sourced from estimates of filled jobs from Labour Account Australia and estimates of employed persons from Labour Force, Australia. More information is included in Differences to Labour Force employment statistics.

The data underlying these estimates are revised in each release and reflected in percentage change movements and indexes. See Data variability and revisions for more detail.

Time series estimates

The estimates are presented as an original series only. Seasonally adjusted and trend estimates are not yet available. A number of years of stable data will be required before seasonal patterns can be observed and adjusted for.

The calendarisation and imputation methodologies applied to the estimates account for calendar related variations, such as the number of days in a month, and different payment frequencies.

Privacy and confidentiality

Legislative requirements to ensure privacy and secrecy of this data have been followed. Only those authorised under the Australian Bureau of Statistics Act 1975 have been allowed to view data about any particular firm in conducting these analyses. In accordance with the Census and Statistics Act 1905, results have been confidentialised to ensure that 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. For more information, see ABS Privacy.

More information

For more information on this methodology email labour.statistics@abs.gov.au.

Data variability and revisions

Weekly Payroll Jobs estimates are derived from data collected via the STP system, which effectively supports employer reporting obligations and ATO operational requirements through enabled software.

STP was not primarily designed to support the production of statistics, hence some inherent characteristics contribute to variability in the estimates and revisions between releases.

Payroll jobs estimates (including percentage change movements and indexes) are revised in each release. Revisions primarily relate to the receipt of more complete STP data over time and have the greatest impact on the most recently reported information. Users should exercise caution when focusing on change in the most recent weeks of data, as this period sees greater levels of revision in subsequent releases. Over time, as more employer-reported data is received, the size of revisions usually decreases.

The ABS has assessed the impact of revisions across the data series and will not be applying revisions prior to January 2022, unless in exceptional circumstances, from the September 2023 release. 

Aside from more complete reporting there are other factors which can influence the size, timing, duration and specificity of revisions.

Seasonality

Re-submission of historical pay periods

Revisions in sub-populations

 

Acknowledgement of source

The results of these studies are based, in part, on ABR data supplied by the Registrar to the ABS under A New Tax System (Australian Business Number) Act 1999 and tax data supplied by the ATO to the ABS under the Taxation Administration Act 1953. These require that such data is only used for the purpose of carrying out functions of the ABS. No individual information collected under the Census and Statistics Act 1905 is provided back to the Registrar or ATO for administrative or regulatory purposes. 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 or ATO’s core operational requirements.

Legislative requirements to ensure privacy and secrecy of this data have been followed. Only those authorised under the Australian Bureau of Statistics Act 1975 have been allowed to view data about any particular firm in conducting these analyses. In accordance with the Census and Statistics Act 1905, results have been confidentialised to ensure that they are not likely to enable identification of a particular person or organisation.

The ABS would like to acknowledge the critical support from the ATO in enabling the ABS to produce these statistics.

Differences to labour force employment statistics

The Weekly Payroll Jobs estimates are a complementary insight to Labour Force statistics on employment and unemployment, which provide a longstanding and comprehensive view of the Labour market. 

The two releases generally show similar national movement in jobs and employment over time, however at the state/territory and industry levels, the changes can be more pronounced. The differences in concepts, scope and methodology used to produce these statistics can affect their interpretation as economic measures. Some factors that explain differences at the state/territory and industry levels include:

  • Real world factors - scope of STP reporting, multiple jobholding and seasonality, and
  • Measurement factors - variability in sampling, reporting and classification. 

The following key differences should be considered when comparing these statistics

 Weekly Payroll JobsLabour Force statistics
Focus of the statisticsJobs.People.
Coverage

Around 10 million payroll jobs for which a payment was reported to the ATO through STP.(a)

Almost all large employers (with 20 or more employees) and eligible small employers are reporting through STP.

Coverage increased steadily from January 2020 to July 2021 as employers started reporting through STP.

All usually resident civilian people aged 15 and over (around 21 million people, of whom 13 million are employed).

Statistics are based on a large survey sample of around 50,000 people responding every month.

Revisions

Revised every release as payroll periods are completed (with imputed data replaced with actual data when received). This ensures comparability over time.

Revisions to jobholder and employer characteristics from periodic updates.(b)

Small revisions every 3 months, aligned with new population statistics.
Types of employment

Employee jobs which are paid through a STP-reported payroll.

Also includes a small number of jobs for non-employees who are paid through STP-reported payrolls.

All employed people,including:
Employees (including Owner managers of incorporated enterprises);

Owner managers of unincorporated enterprises;

Contributing family workers.

Whether paidOnly includes payroll jobs where a payment was reported to the ATO through STP or there is an established payment pattern.Includes all employed people who were paid or who had a job but weren't paid (on unpaid leave, temporarily stood down without pay, etc.).
Multiple job holding

Each job is counted separately, irrespective of whether it is worked by a multiple jobholder. People who work multiple jobs will be counted multiple times.

Industry is identified for each job, not just the main job and the level of multiple jobholding can vary between industries.

Each person is only counted once, and job characteristics (other than hours) relate to a person's main job.

Around 6% of employed people are multiple jobholders, particularly young people.

LocationResidence of the jobholder, based on address held by the ATO.Place of usual residence of people at the time of the survey.
IndustryDetermined from the business' industry on the ABS Business Register. Industry coding is applied to all jobs held by multiple jobholders.Self-reported by the person at the time of the survey. Industry is coded for the main job only.
Time seriesOriginal index series. No seasonally adjusted or trend series are available yet.Original and seasonally adjusted (trend is currently suspended, during the COVID-19 period).
  1. A compositional breakdown of payroll jobs can be found in Characteristics spotlight: 2022.
  2. The update of jobholder and employer characteristics can be found in How data are processed.

Labour Force analysis of employment versus payroll jobs up to August 2020 can be found in Strong employment growth for non-employees. More information on the differences between Weekly Payroll Jobs estimates and similar ABS statistics are detailed in the Coherence section of How data are processed

History of changes

A timeline of methodological changes are listed below for easy reference.

By release date

Glossary

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Abbreviations

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