2901.0 - Census of Population and Housing: Census Dictionary, 2016  
ARCHIVED ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 23/08/2016   
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2016 Census Dictionary >> Glossary >> Industry of Employment (INDP)


Industry of Employment (INDP)

This variable describes the industries in which employed people aged 15 years and over work.

A person's industry of employment is classified based on responses to a range of questions, and in particular questions which ask for a description of the industry or business, and the main goods produced, or main services provided.

Question 42 on the paper Census Household Form, which asks for a description of the industry or business, changed from a mark box format to a write-in format in 2016.

Also for 2016, targeted supplementary questions on industry, asking more specialised questions based on the initial response, have been added to the online Census forms, to provide better quality fine-level data. Common industry responses from 2011 which were difficult to code to an appropriate level of detail, for example 'construction', are targeted by these questions.

Responses to the Industry of employment related questions in the 2016 Census are classified using the Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification (ANZSIC), 2006 (Revision 2.0). Standard 2016 Census data will be output based on this classification. The latest revision of ANZSIC was in 2013. No industries were removed or added in this revision. There were some changes such as clarification of definitions and corrections of small errors and omissions.

The occupation or task of an individual, in general, should not be used to determine the industry in which the person works because industry coding based on occupation can give a very different result to that based on the employer's activity. For example, a person works for a coal mining company as a driver of the company's coal trucks. The individual's occupation is truck driver. However, the industry of the individual's employer is Coal Mining and not Transport. This example illustrates how using an individual's occupation as a proxy for industry can lead to erroneous industry coding. A business may employ many people in different occupations but the employees should all be coded to the industry of that business.

Information on the type of industry carried out by the employer at the workplace has been gathered in each Census since 1911. The name of employer and address of workplace has been collected since the 1954 Census. The inclusion of the industry topic in the Census provides a source of useful information on the regional distribution and structure of Australian industry, and allows investigation of structural change in industry over time. It also provides information on the characteristics of workers by industry (such as age, qualification and occupation), which is important for workforce studies, and the identification of migrant and other groups by industry.

See also Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification (ANZSIC), Place of Work (POWP), Working population.






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