Labour Force, Australia, Detailed

Annual averages are important for understanding the current state of the labour market, and providing medium and long-term signals.

However, unusual, sudden and/or extreme changes in the labour market (e.g. changes to regular and seasonal patterns in employment, working hours, job search or availability as a result of COVID-19) can be difficult to account for in the short-term using a 12 month moving average. The application of an annual average to the original regional estimates in Table 16b is unlikely to accurately or quickly detect turning points in the time series during periods of significant change, which should be considered before drawing any conclusions from these estimates.

For advice on reporting data from our regional labour force products (Pivot tables RM1, RM3 and Tables 16, 16B, 16C) see Advice on reporting regional labour force data.

As part of ongoing improvements to the estimation method for Labour Force statistics, the ABS is also developing improved monthly regional labour force estimates.

An information paper was released on 30 October 2023, containing new SA4 level estimates, alongside a research paper, A Rao-Yu model for small area estimation of labour force statistics, with additional details on the time series model used to produce these estimates.

The first monthly release of the new modelled SA4 estimates will be in early May 2024, one week after the release of March 2024 issue of Labour Force, Australia, Detailed, with March 2024 being the latest month of data available.

As part of ongoing improvements to the estimation method for Labour Force statistics, the ABS will make some minor changes in how it accounts for some relatively small population groups within the sample.

There are various small groups, which together account for less than 2 per cent of the overall sample, who are more difficult to survey each month, contribute a higher degree of underlying sampling variability, and for whom there is more reliable auxiliary data sources (e.g. regular administrative data). This includes some people who don’t live in private dwellings and some people who live in remote and very remote parts of Australia.

As noted in recent Labour Force releases, ABS research and analysis has shown that estimation models that draw on auxiliary data for these groups produce a better quality contribution for them to aggregate Labour Force statistics.

The ABS will introduce the new method with the February 2024 release (and quarterly population rebenchmarking revisions) on 21 March 2024. Further information on this estimation improvements can be found in Improvements to Labour Force estimation method.