People are considered to be employed if they were in paid work for one hour or more in the reference week, or were contributing family workers working an hour or more. Those people who were absent from work in the reference week are also considered to be employed (unless they had been on unpaid leave for more than four weeks). This section contains information about people who are employed, including whether they worked full-time or part-time, and details about the industry and occupation they work in.
Relating employment levels to population levels enables evaluation of the strength of job growth compared to population growth. The measure relating these two levels is the employment/population ratio. Its usefulness lies in the fact that, while movements in the employment level reflect net changes in the levels of persons holding jobs, movements in the ratio reflect net changes in the number of persons employed relative to changes in the size of the population.
The overall employment/population ratio rose from 58.1% in 1996-97 to 59.5% in 2001-02; the latter represents a slight fall from 59.6% recorded in 2000-01 (table 6.12). In 2001-02, the employment/population ratio for males was considerably higher than for females (67.4% compared to 51.8%), which reflects the higher participation of males in the labour force.
6.12 EMPLOYED PERSONS(a), Employment/population ratios(b)
|
| 1996-97 | 1997-98 | 1998-99 | 1999-2000 | 2000-01 | 2001-02 |
| % | % | % | % | % | % |
|
Males | 67.1 | 66.9 | 67.2 | 67.6 | 67.6 | 67.4 |
Females | 49.5 | 49.5 | 50.0 | 51.0 | 51.8 | 51.8 |
Persons | 58.1 | 58.1 | 58.5 | 59.2 | 59.6 | 59.5 |
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(a) Data have not been revised to reflect definitional changes in the Labour Force Survey questionnaire introduced in April 2001. Data collected from April 2001 onwards are not strictly comparable with data collected in earlier periods. For further information, see 'Information Paper: Implementing the Redesigned Labour Force Survey Questionnaire' (6295.0).
(b) The employment/population ratio for any group is the number of employed persons expressed as a percentage of the civilian population aged 15 and over in the same group. |
Source: ABS data available on request, Labour Force Survey. |