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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.

Data in this publication are sourced from a linked employer-employee dataset (LEED).

The LEED includes tax data supplied by the Australian Tax Office (ATO) to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) under the Taxation Administration Act 1953, which requires that such data is only used for the purpose of administering the Census and Statistics Act 1905. Any discussion of data limitations or weaknesses is in the context of using the data for statistical purposes, and is not related to the ability of the data to support the ATO's core operational requirements.

The LEED also includes Australian Business Register (ABR) data supplied by the Registrar to the ABS under A New Tax System (Australian Business Number) Act 1999, which requires that such data is only used for the purpose of carrying out functions of the ABS. Any discussion of data limitations or weaknesses is in the context of using the data for statistical purposes, and is not related to the ability of the data to support the ABR’s core operational requirements.

The LEED uses this data via the Business Longitudinal Analysis Data Environment (BLADE). Both the LEED and BLADE integrate Commonwealth data, and comply with the High Level Principles for Data Integration Involving Commonwealth Data for Statistical and Research Purposes.

Legislative requirements of information have been followed to ensure privacy and secrecy. In accordance with the Census and Statistics Act 1905, results have been confidentialised to ensure they are not likely to enable identification of a particular person or organisation.

All personal information is handled in accordance with the Australian Privacy Principles contained in the Privacy Act 1988.

Relevance

This publication provides data on the number and nature of jobs, the people who hold them, and their employers. This can be used to understand regional labour markets, or to identify the impact of major changes in local communities. It also provides new insights into the number of jobs people hold, the duration of jobs, and the industries and employment income of concurrent jobs.

The scope of this data includes individuals who submitted an individual tax return to the ATO, individuals who had a PAYG payment summary issued by an employer, and their employers.

Data conform as closely as possible to ABS Income Standards.

Data is presented according to the geography of the Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS), covering Statistical Area Level 2 (SA2), Statistical Area Level 3 (SA3), Statistical Area Level 4 (SA4), Greater Capital City Statistical Area (GCCSA), state/territory, and Australia.

Timeliness

The ABS receives tax data from the ATO approximately 16 months after the end of the financial year. This data then requires processing time to construct BLADE and to produce a coherent and clean persons dataset. These factors contribute to the long delay between the end of the financial year and the publication of statistics from the LEED.

Because taxation data may be submitted to the ATO after the ITR cut-off date, it may not be available at the time the ATO provides data to the ABS and is only added in future provisions. As such, annual data in the LEED can become more complete over time. This is estimated to have a slightly greater impact on the self-employed population than on the larger employee and employer populations, and a negligible impact overall.

Accuracy

Jobs in Australia is subject to the following sources of error:

• Conceptual misalignment. The Australian tax system is purpose-built and complex, and in some cases it is difficult to determine how a particular income tax item should be used to describe income standards, and in some cases the item can be a partial conceptual match. While all care is taken, some income items are subject to this type of validity error. Coherence with other sources indicates that this has a low impact on aggregate series.
• Measurement error. This is likely to be present in both person and business information used. Most measurement error is unable to be determined or corrected; however, coherence with other similar statistics demonstrates that this has a low impact on aggregate series.
• Incomplete information. Over half of owner manager of unincorporated enterprise (OMUE) jobs are in businesses for which complete information is not available. Occupation is missing or unable to be determined for approximately 21% of employed persons. While no bias has been detected in missing occupation information, a very slight bias has been detected in relation to OMUEs with missing industry. Information appears to be missing for a slightly higher proportion of OMUEs in Agriculture relative to OMUEs in other industries. The ABS advises caution when interpreting data subject to high rates of missing information.

• differences in the concepts, scope and methodology used in the LEED and those used in household and business surveys.
• the LEED containing a combination of administrative data collected for taxation purposes from both individuals and businesses, whereas other ABS data sources are compiled for the explicit purpose of producing statistics.
• unreported cash in hand payments, which are excluded from the LEED but may be included in household and business surveys.
• the LEED including information relating to the whole financial year, rather than a particular point in time.

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