Characteristics of Employment, Australia

Latest release

Weekly earnings of employees, casual workers, independent contractors, trade union membership, labour hire, job flexibility, job security

Reference period
August 2023

Key statistics

In August 2023:

  • Median employee earnings was $1,300 per week, up $52 (4.2%) since August 2022.
  • 2.7 million casual employees (22% of employees, 19% of all employed).
  • 37% of employed people regularly worked from home, down from 40% in Aug 2021.
  • 1.0 million independent contractors (7.5% of employed).

Topics

Statistics from the Characteristics of Employment survey are published in four topic-based releases.

Data downloads

Employee earnings

Data files

Earnings guide

To learn more about the earnings data collected by the ABS, refer to our Guide to labour statistics. It provides summary information on labour market topics including Earnings data.  

Working arrangements

Data files

Data item list

Microdata and TableBuilder

Characteristics of Employment survey microdata for 2014 to 2023 is now available in ABS DataLab as a supplementary file for the Longitudinal Labour Force (LLFS) microdata. For more information, refer to Microdata and TableBuilder: Characteristics of Employment.

The release of the August 2023 Characteristics of Employment microdata into Tablebuilder has been delayed until next year due to continuing upgrades to the TableBuilder system infrastructure.

The previously released and unrevised issue of Characteristics of Employment microdata in Tablebuilder for the periods August 2014 to August 2022 will remain available during this time.

DataLab - Characteristics of employment, Data item list, 2014 to 2023

Previous catalogue number

This release previously used catalogue number 6333.0*.

Prior to 2014, statistics were published in:

 

*Note: Catalogue number 6333.0 was previously used for Working Conditions, Australia (Preliminary), Feb to May 1979. 

Post release changes

19/04/2024

  • Employee Earnings Table 8 has been reloaded to correct a pivot table display issue, including how percentage shares are displayed.
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