Labour Force, Australia, Detailed

Latest release

Detailed monthly and quarterly Labour Force Survey data, including hours, regions, families, job search, job duration, casual, industry and occupation

Reference period
February 2024
Released
28/03/2024
  • Next Release 24/04/2024
    Labour Force, Australia, Detailed, March 2024
  • Next Release 2/05/2024
    Labour Force, Australia, Detailed, March 2024
  • Next Release 23/05/2024
    Labour Force, Australia, Detailed, April 2024
  • View all releases

About this release

Data from the monthly Labour Force Survey are released in two stages:

  1. Labour Force, Australia - which contains headline estimates of employment, unemployment, underemployment, participation and hours worked
  2. Labour Force, Australia, Detailed - which contains detailed data not included in the first release

This second release of Labour Force Survey data includes the latest detailed monthly and quarterly data. Some information, including industry, occupation, sector, job duration, and retrenchment, is only available for February, May, August and November.

As a result, in the 'non-quarter' months, the quarterly spreadsheets and datacubes have a different reference period. For example, the May issue contains May monthly and May quarterly data, while the July issue will contain July monthly and May quarterly data.

For more information on the data contained in the first and second releases, see the Survey output section of the Labour Force Survey Methodology page.

Articles

As part of ongoing improvements to the estimation method for Labour Force statistics, in this month’s release, the ABS has implemented some minor changes in how it accounts for some relatively small population groups within the sample. This has resulted in revisions to the original Labour Force series from August 2016. Revision analysis from improvements to Labour Force estimation method provides with an impact analysis of the expected improvements to the Labour Force estimates.

For a list of previously published LFS articles, see the Article archive.

Using regional labour force data

Annual averages are important for understanding the current state of the labour market, and providing medium and long-term signals.

However, unusual, sudden and/or extreme changes in the labour market (e.g. changes to regular and seasonal patterns in employment, working hours, job search or availability as a result of COVID-19) can be difficult to account for in the short-term using a 12 month moving average. The application of an annual average to the original regional estimates in Table 16b is unlikely to accurately or quickly detect turning points in the time series during periods of significant change, which should be considered before drawing any conclusions from these estimates.

For advice on reporting data from our regional labour force products (Pivot tables RM1, RM3 and Tables 16, 16B, 16C) see Advice on reporting regional labour force data.

Update on enhanced regional labour market data

As part of ongoing improvements to the estimation method for Labour Force statistics, the ABS is also developing improved monthly regional labour force estimates.

The first monthly release of the new modelled SA4 estimates will be in early May 2024, one week after the release of March 2024 issue of Labour Force, Australia, Detailed, with March 2024 being the latest month of data available.

Labour force status

Monthly (February)

Data files

Quarterly (February)

Data files

Industry, Occupation and Sector

Quarterly (February)

Data files

Hours worked

Monthly (February)

Data files

Unemployment

Monthly (February)

Data files

Quarterly (February)

Data files

Underemployment and underutilisation

Quarterly (February)

Data files

Status in employment

Monthly (February)

Data files

Quarterly (February)

Data files

Labour market regions (SA4)

Monthly (February)

Data files

Quarterly (February)

Data files

Relationship in household

Monthly (February)

Data files

Current and expected job duration

Quarterly (February)

Data files

Retrenchment

Quarterly (February)

Data files

Not in the labour force

Monthly (February)

Data files

All data downloads

All monthly time series spreadsheets

All monthly pivot tables

All quarterly time series spreadsheets

All quarterly pivot tables

Previous catalogue number

This release previously used catalogue numbers:

Detailed Labour Force data were also previously published in:

Back to top of the page