Small Area Labour Markets - Australia
Reissue of March Quarter 2008 estimates
In June 2008, the ABS unexpectedly revised their regional labour force figures for every region in New South Wales back to November 2007, due to an error in their processing system. While the ABS has advised that the revisions were due to adjustments in the weights applied to the New South Wales estimates, there were also some very minor changes to regional estimates in other States (due to the nature of the composite estimation process, which the ABS has used to produce its Labour Force Survey estimates since November 2007).
The revisions to the ABS regional data mean that some of the previously published Small Area Labour Markets (SALM) figures for the March quarter 2008 and December quarter 2007 (particularly those pertaining to Statistical Local Areas (SLAs) in New South Wales) no longer align with the latest ABS regional labour force data. Accordingly, to ensure the accuracy of the SALM estimates, the figures for the March quarter 2008 and the December quarter 2007 have been revised to reflect the ABS’ revised regional labour force figures.
The revisions affected 71 SLAs in the December quarter 2007 and 182 SLAs in the March quarter 2008 (in the smoothed series). While a substantial number of SLAs have been affected, it is important to note that most of the revisions (68 in the December quarter 2007 and 149 in the March quarter 2008) were relatively minor (ie, within 0.2 percentage points either way of the original unemployment rate). As could be expected, given that the ABS revisions primarily affected regions in New South Wales, the vast majority of affected SLAs were also in New South Wales.
Given the above changes, the PDF version of SALM has been reissued (see link below). Also on this page is a link to a table containing a list of every SLA that has been affected by the ABS’ revisions, comparing the revised and unrevised unemployment rates.
Small Area Labour Markets - March Quarter 2008 (reissue)
Small Area Labour Markets presents estimates of the number of unemployed persons and unemployment rates for approximately 1350 Statistical Local Areas across Australia. It also provides estimates of the main labour market aggregates for the 19 DEEWR labour market regions.
The June quarter 2008 edition of Small Area Labour Markets will be released and published on this site in August 2008.
Small Area Labour Markets is prepared by the Economic and Labour Market Analysis Branch in the Labour Market Strategies Group.
Small Area Labour Markets in book form and as a data file
Small Area Labour Markets is also available
- in book form (free on request), which is a hardcopy version of the PDF file accessible above; and
- as a data file containing the SLA estimates in Table 3 and 4 of the PDF publication. The data file is available in Excel and comma separated values (CSV) formats and also includes SLA identifiers. The data files can be purchased as either an annual subscription or a one-off special data order.
For further information about either the book or data file formats of Small Area Labour Markets, email SALM.
Other sources of information
The Department also publishes the quarterly Australian Regional Labour Markets brochure which presents labour market information for the Australian Bureau of Statistics Labour Force Regions. This publication is available free on request by calling (02) 6121 3538.