QUALITY DECLARATION - SUMMARY

INSTITUTIONAL ENVIRONMENT

For information on the institutional environment of the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), including the legislative obligations of the ABS, financing and governance arrangements, and mechanisms for scrutiny of ABS operations, please see ABS Institutional Environment.


RELEVANCE

Statistics in the Persons Not In the Labour Force (PNILF), Underemployed Workers (UEW) and Job Search Experience (JSE) release present data on the characteristics and labour market experiences of persons not in the labour force, underemployed workers, unemployed persons, employed persons who started their current job in the previous 12 months and persons employed for more than a year in their current job who looked for work in the previous 12 months. Information is presented for key populations of interest by demographic and labour market characteristics.

PNILF are people who are neither employed nor unemployed in a particular reference period. They can be divided into two groups, those with marginal attachment to the labour force and those without marginal attachment to the labour force.

Persons are considered marginally attached to the labour force if they:

• want to work and are actively looking for work but are not available to start work in the reference week; or
• want to work and are not actively looking for work but are available to start work within four weeks.

Persons are considered not marginally attached to the labour force if they:

• did not want to work; or
• want to work, but were not actively looking for work and were not available to start work within four weeks; or
• were permanently unable to work.

Numbers derived from Persons Not In the Labour Force Survey contribute to measures of the Extended labour force underutilisation rate.

UEW are employed people who would prefer and are available for more hours of work than they currently have. They comprise:

• Part-time workers who want and are available for, more hours of work than they currently have, either in the reference week or in the four weeks subsequent to the survey; and
• Full-time workers who worked part-time hours during the reference week for economic reasons (such as being stood down or insufficient work available). It is assumed that these people would prefer to work full-time in the reference week and would have been available to do so.

The number of Underemployed Workers contributes to measuring underutilised labour resources in the economy.

The JSE survey collects information on three labour force groups aged 15 years and over:

• unemployed persons;
• employed persons who started their current job in the previous 12 months;
• persons employed for more than a year in their current job who looked for work in the previous 12 months.

Due to problems experienced with the collection of education data for the 2014 Job Search Experience component of this survey, this data is not available.

This has resulted in two tables not being presented that were previously released in the JSE publication:

• Table 9 - Level of highest non-school qualification, by sex, by duration of current period of unemployment; and
• Table 12 - Level of highest non-school qualification, by sex, by duration of looking for work before current job.

The data item Level of highest non-school qualification presented in Tables 1, 3 and 10 of JSE publications is also not available from this survey.

Education questions will not be asked in the new Participation, Job Search and Mobility survey (cat. no. 6226.0), instead have been collected as part of the LFS from July 2014.


TIMELINESS

Statistics in this release are compiled from the Persons Not In the Labour Force (PNILF), Underemployed Workers (UEW) and Job Search Experience (JSE) survey that was conducted throughout Australia in February 2014 as a supplement to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) monthly Labour Force Survey (LFS).

Care should be taken when comparing the estimates for PNILF, UEW and JSE with previous years as PNILF and UEW were previously collected in September, and JSE was previously collected in July. There is potential seasonal variations in the experiences of some of these groups.



ACCURACY

Estimates from this publication are subject to sampling and non-sampling errors. Relative standard error (RSE) is a measure of the size of the sampling error affecting and estimate, i.e. the error introduced by basing estimates on a sample of the population rather than the full population. Non-sampling errors are inaccuracies that occur due to imperfections in reporting by respondents and interviewers, and errors made in coding and processing data.

This publication was designed primarily to provide estimates at the Australia level. Broad estimates are available for state/territory and/or capital city/balance. Users should exercise caution when using estimates at this level because of the presence of high sampling errors. RSEs are available for estimates in the Technical Note of the publication.

There is some overlap in the populations - some people will go through UEW and JSE (employed and worked less than 35 hours in the reference week). People who are not in the labour force will only go through PNILF, while unemployed people, and employed people who usually work 35 hours or more per week, and were not underemployed in the reference week, will only go through JSE.

Care should be taken when comparing the estimates for PNILF, UEW and JSE with previous years as PNILF and UEW were previously collected in September, and JSE was previously collected in July. There is potential seasonal variations in the experiences of some of these groups.

COHERENCE

The ABS has combined the seven regular labour supplementary surveys into two surveys - the Participation, Job Search and Mobility (PJSM) survey conducted in February each year from 2015 and the Characteristics of Employees (COE) survey conducted each August from 2014.

This survey is an interim collection combining three of the four surveys that form the PJSM survey that were not previously collected in February to provide a bridge to the fully combined PJSM survey. The fourth survey included in the PJSM survey is Labour Mobility which was last run in February 2013.

The PJSM survey will provide information on unemployment, underemployment, labour force participation, job change and job search in the Australian labour market.

The new PJSM supplementary survey integrates key elements of the Labour Mobility, Job Search Experience (JSE), Underemployed Workers (UEW) and Persons Not in the Labour Force (PNILF) surveys. The Labour Mobility survey was run for the last time in February 2013 and the other three surveys were run for the last time in their traditional form in February 2014 before being integrated in February 2015.

PJSM will describe some of the key features and labour market experiences of the economically active population as well as those not in the labour force, and provide insight into:

• job change;
• job mobility;
• job search;
• participation and increasing participation;
• underemployment; and
• marginal attachment.

Combining this range of topics into a single survey and conducting it in a LFS quarter month will enable comprehensive analysis of labour supply and churn, while also maintaining most of the content that was previously available from the separate JSE, UEW, PNILF and Labour Mobility surveys.

INTERPRETABILITY

This publication contains tables with footnoted data to aid interpretation of the results of the survey. Detailed Explanatory Notes, a Technical Note and a Glossary are also included providing information on the terminology, classifications and other technical aspects associated with these statistics.


ACCESSIBILITY

Persons Not In the Labour Force, Underemployed Workers and Job Search Experience, Australia (cat. no. 6226.0.55.001) is released electronically via the ABS website as tables in spreadsheet format. Additional data may be available on request (subject to data quality). Full details of data items for this survey are available from the Downloads tabs in Excel spreadsheets, as Data Cube 1 - PNILF 2014 Data Items List, Data Cube 2 - UEW 2014 Data Items List and Data Cube 3 - JSE 2014 Data Items List. Note that detailed data can be subject to high relative standard errors, and in some cases, may result in data being confidentialised.

For further information about these or related statistics, contact the National Information and Referral Centre on 1300 135 070 or contact Labour Force and Supplementary Survey Section on Canberra (02) 6252 7206.