Education statistics from the February 2026 Labour Force Survey

The purpose of this paper is to explain how to interpret the education statistics presented in the Data downloads which have been produced from the February 2026 Labour Force Survey (LFS). Tables of estimates and proportions, and their associated measures of errors, are presented in the Data downloads.

Users who may have previously referred to education statistics published in Education and Work may benefit from noting the following methodological differences if needing to compare this data with data from the Education and Work publication. 

The statistics in these Data downloads were derived from data that was collected in the February 2026 LFS. Statistics in the Education and Work publication were derived from data that was collected in the LFS annually in May. Caution should be used when comparing the statistics in these Data downloads with data in the Education and Work publication or with education data in any Labour Force publication. 

For detailed methodological information, refer to the Labour Force methodology and the Education and Work methodology. 

The scope of the statistics in these Data downloads is restricted to people aged 15-74 years and excludes the following:

• members of the permanent defence forces
• certain diplomatic personnel of overseas governments
• overseas residents in Australia
• members of non-Australian defence forces (and their dependents) stationed in Australia
• people in special dwellings (e.g. patients in hospitals, residents of retirement homes, residents of homes for people with disabilities, inmates of prisons, people staying at short stay caravan parks, boarding school pupils)
• discrete Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities
• people living in very remote areas in Australia.

Labour Force Survey weighting applies to the statistics in these Data downloads. Statistics released previously in Education and Work were weighted in a separate process. For the statistics in these Data downloads, records missing responses to education questions were retained in the dataset and a small number of data items include a ‘Level not determined’ category containing these records.

To minimise the risk of identifying individuals in aggregate statistics, a technique has been developed to randomly adjust values. Random adjustment of the data, known as perturbation, is considered the best technique for avoiding the release of identifiable data while maximising the range of information that can be released.

When perturbation is applied, all values are slightly adjusted, including the totals values in tables, to prevent any identifiable data being exposed. These adjustments have a negligible impact on the underlying pattern of the statistics. However, they may cause the sum of rows or columns to differ by small amounts from totals. 

The perturbation applied to the statistics in these Data downloads will result in slightly different values from the perturbed data released in the Labour Force TableBuilder. Perturbation is not applied to the main release of statistics in Labour Force, Australia.

Further information about perturbation is available in How the data is processed.