Overview

Labour statistics provide information on four key components related to work and the broader labour market: people, jobs, hours worked and labour payments, including:

• People: e.g. the number of people working, looking for work and not working; their demographic and personal characteristics; the efforts they have undergone to find work; their experience in employment; and the amount of work they do.
• Jobs: e.g. the number of filled and vacant jobs in the economy; the duration of the jobs; the number of jobs held by employed people; and job mobility.
• Hours worked: e.g. the number of hours actually and usually worked by people in jobs; the number of hours paid for by employers; hours sought by the unemployed; and additional hours preferred by the underemployed.
• Payments: e.g. average weekly earnings; hourly earnings; earnings distribution; compensation of employees; and wage price indexes.

The concepts of supply and demand of labour are integral to each of these four topics. Labour statistics provide information on the total demand for, and supply of, labour.

Boundaries are necessary to define the scope and treatment of activities that occur within the economy and within the labour force. In Australia, the concept of economic activity underlies measures of the economically active population, which in turn is used to define the labour force as well as employing enterprises. For more information on economic activity, enterprises, and the economically active population, see the section: Institutional Units and the Economically Active Population.

Labour statistics are used to study the economic behaviours of employers and employees in response to changing prices, profits, wages and working conditions. They also provide information about the structure of the labour force and its relationship with the wider economy.

Labour statistics have two broad objectives:

• The measurement of the extent of available and unused labour capacity, in time and human resources, for the purpose of macro-economic monitoring and human resources development planning; and
• The measurement of the relationships between employment, income and other social and economic characteristics, for the purpose of formulating and monitoring employment policies and programs, income-generating and maintenance schemes, vocational training and other similar programs.

The first broad objective in collecting data on the economically active population may be labelled as the economic perspective, and the second as the social perspective. Under each perspective, there are several more specific measurement objectives.

Some statistics relating to wage levels, hours of work, labour organisations and unemployment were available in the separate self-governing colonies of Australia in the nineteenth century, when separate statistical bureaux were set up in the various states. However, it was only after Federation in 1901, the subsequent enactment of the Census and Statistics Act in 1905, and the establishment of the Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics in 1906 (later abolished and replaced by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 1974), that the ground was prepared for the compilation of uniform labour statistics for the whole country. In the first national census of 1911, information was collected on occupation, wage rates, unemployment and duration of unemployment. In the same year a Labour and Industrial Branch was set up within the Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics, with the responsibility for publishing a report 'Trade Unionism, Unemployment, Wages, Prices and the Cost of Housing 1891-1912’.

Responsibility shortly thereafter extended into the fields of industrial disputes, trade unions and industrial accidents. This established the pattern of labour statistics that was to be followed more or less unchanged until the early 1960s. The principal sources of information available during this era were:

• Population censuses – undertaken in 1911, 1921, 1933, 1947 and 1954;
• Trade unions – details of wage rates, numbers of unemployed union members and industrial disputes; and
• Administrative sources – details of awards, determinations, industrial agreements and industrial accidents provided in State and Federal statutory reports were all used in the production of labour statistics.

The first regular statistical measure of 'employment' in Australia dates from the introduction of Payroll Tax in 1941. This provided an administrative source of information suitable for deriving civilian employment by industry for each state and Australia, and average weekly earnings for employed wage and salary earners.

The Commonwealth Employment Service (CES) was established in 1947 to assist people seeking employment to obtain jobs best suited to their qualifications, skills, training and experience, and to assist employers seeking additional labour to obtain people best suited to their needs. As a by-product, the CES produced measures of unemployed persons awaiting placement, as well as measures of vacancies notified by employers. The unemployment measure of the CES remained the official measure of unemployment in Australia until the 1970s. Since one of the principal requirements for qualifying for unemployment benefits was registration with the CES, a high degree of coverage resulted.

The integration of the separate State Statistics Bureaux with the Commonwealth Bureau in the late 1950s (though the Tasmanian integration agreement had been reached in 1924) allowed the resultant statistical organisation to place more emphasis on direct collections (more in line with international practices), and less emphasis on administrative by-product data.

The Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics introduced household surveys in 1960, primarily to provide more detailed and comprehensive measures of the labour force than could be provided from administrative data sources (such as the CES series). Initially the program of household surveys comprised only the LFS, which was conducted in capital cities and on a quarterly basis. In 1964 the LFS was extended to the whole of Australia, and in 1978 it was expanded to a monthly frequency, when the Commonwealth Government decreed that it would provide the official measures for employment and unemployment. A supplementary topic was included with the LFS for the first time in November 1961, and this concept has been gradually extended so that a number of months in each year now include supplementary questions on one or more topics. In 1994 the LFS also became the vehicle for a continuous survey of income and housing costs.

In the 1980s the program of household surveys was further expanded to include a program of Special Social Surveys. These surveys collect in-depth information about a population group or subject area of interest, as well as a range of labour force data for the population in scope. In recent years two Special Social Surveys have focussed on labour topics - the longitudinal Survey of Employment and Unemployment Patterns (1994-1997), and the Survey of Employment Arrangements, Retirement and Superannuation (2007). In 1993, the quarterly Population Survey Monitor was introduced. This survey vehicle was designed to collect small amounts of data about simple topics at a reasonable cost, and to output results in a timely manner. It was discontinued in 2000.

In addition to household surveys, the Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics also introduced labour employer surveys in the 1960s. The program of employer surveys initially comprised an annual survey of employing businesses, which was designed to supplement data being derived from payroll tax records to produce a quarterly average weekly earnings series. Conducted each October, the survey collected detailed dissections of earnings and hours paid for, for various categories of jobs (adult and junior, full-time and part-time, managerial and non-managerial) for both males and females. The quarterly series of average weekly earnings provided limited information about the composition of earnings, and no information on occupational earnings or the distribution of earnings. To supplement the quarterly series, a more extensive survey producing this information was introduced in 1974. Currently conducted biennially, this survey is known as the Survey of Employee Earnings and Hours. A survey of job vacancies was also launched in 1974.

By 1981 it was recognised that the payroll tax series used to produce the average weekly earnings and civilian employee series had deteriorated significantly in terms of coverage, due to increasing payroll tax exemptions. Both series were discontinued and replaced with new series based on two new quarterly surveys of employers - the Survey of Average Weekly Earnings (introduced in 1981 and subsequently modified in 1983), and the Survey of Employment and Earnings (introduced in 1983). The mid 1980s also saw the introduction of an irregular survey of labour costs in 1985-86, which in the early 1990s was supplemented by a series of surveys on training expenditure (1989, 1990, 1993, and 1996). In 1997 the quarterly Wage Cost Index was introduced.

As described in Information Paper: Outcomes of the Labour Household Surveys Content Review, 2012, the ABS conducted a review of content included in the labour household survey program in 2010-11. The review aimed to improve the relevance of data released, maximise the coherence of interrelated topics and minimise the duplication of content. The scope of the review included the LFS, labour supplementary surveys and labour Multipurpose Household Survey topics. A major outcome of the review was the consolidation of a range of content collected across labour supplementary surveys into two annual collections. Content collected in the supplementary Employee Earnings, Benefits and Trade Union Membership and Forms of Employment surveys was combined and is now included in the content of the Characteristics of Employment supplementary survey, conducted annually each August from 2014. Content collected in the supplementary Persons not in the Labour Force, Underemployed Workers, Job Search Experience and Labour Mobility surveys was also combined and is now included in the content of the Participation, Job Search and Mobility supplementary survey, conducted annually each February from 2015.