Weekend Edition: Getting to know labour market data
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What is the Australian Labour Force Survey and how is it collected?
The ABS produces a whole swag of reports from the census down to GDP numbers to monthly employment data or data. They're going to be interchangeable for the next half hour, I tell you. Data that the government relies on for policy, businesses is dependent on for planning, and investors used to understand how the economy is travelling. So today, let's drill down on that labour market data, specifically. How is it collected? What's it telling us? And are we facing the same issues? That are being faced overseas where people don't want to fill it in. And collecting accurate data is becoming more costly and difficult. That's this week. The morning call from NAB with Phil Dobby. The weekend edition. We are bombarded with data, of course, on a daily basis.
That's what we talk about and have been for the last eight years on the morning call. But not all data is equal, and some is more important than others, and some is more reliable than others. So think of the ADP employment numbers in the States versus the non farm payrolls data, often telling a very different story about the same thing. And we know in some countries like the UK and the US. US, statistical bureaus have been suffering from a combination of insufficient investment and a reluctance by respondents to take part in surveys. So are they fighting a losing battle against data regulations and rising privacy concerns? A reluctant set of respondents. And where does the ABS fit into all of this? Well Bjorn Jarvis is uh head of Labour Statistics at the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
We've got him to talk to us. about how their data is collected and what it's telling us. So Beyond, first of all, the methodology behind the labour market data, these are good old fashioned interviews, aren't they? That's right, Phil.
Uh great to be here. So yes, the Australian Labor Force Survey, it's a a survey that we've been running for close to sixty five years. Um but yes, it's it's done through interviews where we're asking a a series of questions and people respond to those. Uh and that's that's what
we're deriving the statistics from. Is this face to face? Are you knocking on doors or is it over the phone? Or imagine these days the internet obviously has got a part to play in all of this?
Yeah, it's it's actually all of the above. So one of the great successes that we've had with the Australian Labour Force survey is uh that we make it as easy as possible for people to respond. So about forty percent of people actually choose to go online these days. About kind of forty to fifty percent uh do it over the phone, and then the remainder are are done through face to face interviews.
And the same people are getting asked these questions repeatedly, aren't they, over a over a uh a certain period of time?
So for the Australian Labour Force Survey, households are in for eight months in a row. So there's about twenty five thousand households that answer questions every month, and that gives us a sample of around fifty thousand people, which both sounds like an enormous number and not an enormous number. But yeah, when you when you're talking about um sample surveys, that is a very large sample that we're drawing from. So people are in for eight months, then that means that um each month, one eighth. of the sample uh is rotated out and replaced by people that live in the same community um that that the people that they were kind of replacing uh were living in. So that means that in a given month, about eighty percent of people who are responding to the survey are exactly the same people who were responding the month before.
Right, but that one eighth the Uri place, I mean, you'd have to make sure they are exactly the same and they're gonna respond in exactly the same way.
Why do Australians respond to the survey at higher rates than other countries?
Do you get statistical anomalies ever as you move from from one group to the next?
So we we draw the sample from the same area and we're kind of focused on making sure that we've got a represent representative sample across the country, but also representative of a range of different socioeconomic areas.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the Australian Labour Force Survey and how is it collected?
0:01–3:15
2
Why do Australians respond to the survey at higher rates than other countries?
3:15–7:44
3
How does the ABS ensure sample rotation and representativeness over time?
7:44–11:50
4
What makes the ABS labour market data less prone to revisions than overseas surveys?
11:50–15:44
5
How are administrative data and payroll information integrated into labour statistics?
15:44–19:55
6
What forward‑looking indicators could complement the current labour market releases?
19:55–24:26
7
How does the ABS handle seasonal adjustments and pandemic‑related shocks?
24:26–28:55
8
What were the biggest surprises in Australian labour market trends post‑COVID?
28:55–29:53