Public sector employment and earnings methodology

Most businesses (and organisations) included on the ABSBR are in the non-profiled population. These businesses usually have simple structures that are suitable for ABS statistical purposes at the ABN level. Businesses included in the non-profiled population have homogeneous activity (i.e., operate predominantly in one industry sub-division), however, they can have large employment. For the non-profiled population, one ABN equates to one business.

For some businesses (and organisations), the ABN unit is not suitable for ABS economic statistics purposes. The ABS maintains its own economic units structure through direct contact with businesses and these businesses constitute the profiled population which consists of large, complex and diverse groups of businesses. This population is represented by Type of Activity Units (TAUs) which consist of one or more business entities, sub entities or branches of a business that can be grouped according to production activity and can report a minimum set of data items. These TAUs are classified according to the industry of the main activity. The relationship between TAUs and their associated legal entities (ABNs) may be one-to-one, many-to-one, or one-to-many.

The initial transformation step, calendarisation converts transactions to daily pay events for individual employees allowing the data to be aggregated to a financial year period.

This transformation is required as STP data are reported on a cash basis (the time when the payment was made) rather than an accrual basis (the time when the payment was earned). Production of real time estimates of labour market activity require the conversion of STP data from a cash basis to an accrual basis. The calendarisation method breaks down all records to a common period (daily) enabling data to be aggregated to a financial year.

There are some types of payments that cannot be attributed to a defined pay cycle period, such as backpay, hence these payments are shown when the pay event occurred.

STP reporting may be incomplete for a reference period for a range of reasons including, but not limited to:

• different business reporting habits
• different pay cycle period reporting

Imputation is a form of jobholder level non-response adjustment, applied to account for partially reported STP payments and/or lagged reporting.  

Imputation extends a jobholder's daily rate to the end of the relevant reference month and is only applied:

• to the end of the reference month of the jobholder’s latest pay event, where it does not extend to the end of the reference month, and they do not have a termination date and/or termination payment
• for jobholders where a regular payment pattern can be determined
• across the last three months of the financial year
• to in scope earnings payments (wages and salaries). Other earnings payments such as lump sum leave are not imputed.

Employers who did not report payments to STP for any employees during the reference period are not imputed and are instead accounted for during the weight adjustment process.

In 2025-26, the imputation rate for total wages and salaries paid by employers is 0.08%.

No imputation is applied for new employees (related to existing or new employers) without historical payment information, until a pattern can be determined. This means that there can be a lag before a new employee's wages and salaries contributes to the estimates (after their initial pay period). The lag is longer for new employees with employers who have less frequent payment and reporting periods. No adjustment is applied to account for this new job lag.

Imputation does not impact the employee jobs measure.

Once calendarisation and imputation are applied, the employee level data for the reference period is aggregated to the ABN used by the employer for STP reporting. This forms the core employer level data that are transformed to statistical unit level data.

For the non-profiled population (that is, businesses with a simple structure), the ABN is directly mapped to the statistical unit. For most businesses in this population, wages and salaries and employee jobs are allocated to a single state and territory in alignment with the business’ single state and/or territory of operation. Businesses which operate in multiple states and territories have their wages and salaries and employee jobs allocated to each state and territory. 

For the profiled population (that is, businesses with a complex structure), there can be many ABNs and the mapping of employer level data to the statistical unit is more complex. ABN level data is aggregated to the highest level of the ABS economic units model, the Enterprise Group (EG). The EG level data are then apportioned into one or more TAUs using proration factors based on total Business Activity Statement wages and salaries and ABSBR employment for employee jobs. Data is subsequently prorated from each TAU to its states and territories of operation based on ABSBR employment.

Statistical units are stratified by state/territory, industry division and employment size. When employing businesses do not report to STP during the reference period (that is, full non-response), an employer level non-response adjustment (weighting) is applied to the data received from responding businesses to fully account for the employee earnings and employee jobs of the target population of all employing businesses.

Weighting accounts for less than 1.0% of the 2025-26 estimates for both total cash wages and salaries and employee jobs.

Statistical unit level data are aggregated to the output classifications of state/territory, industry division, level of government and public sector. 

Percentage change movements within this release are calculated from un-rounded level estimates.

STP is a dynamic administrative data source, hence these estimates may be 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 STP item should be used to describe impact on cash wages and salaries. 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 the aggregates.
• Reporting error - this is likely to be present in both employee and employer information used. Given the magnitude of STP records submitted every month, a significance approach is taken to identify and adjust for reporting errors that have a significant effect on high level aggregate estimates. Some reporting errors will remain. These errors are considered to have a low impact on the aggregate series and may be corrected in subsequent employer reporting.
• Lag in business characteristic updates - the ABSBR receives updated information when a business entity reports changes to either the Australian Business Register or the ATO, such as new registration, revised classificatory information, or when the business entity reports changes in its business structure or activity. These reporting changes can impact upon the business entity’s industry classification (ANZSIC), geographic classification (state or territory) and to a lesser extent its institutional classification (public/private sector). There may be a delay between the real world timing of these changes, and the update of this information in these statistics.

Revisions are a change in the value of a previously published value and may arise due to a variety of reasons. They reflect both the complexity of measurement, and the need to balance precision and timeliness to maximise the utility of the indicator.

Revisions may occur to PSEE due to:

• Revisions to the source STP data including receipt of updated or more complete data
• Refinements to decisions made around the treatment of data anomalies in the series
• Annual frame updates, including updates to the structure of profiled businesses
• Implementation of methodological and process improvements.

This release includes updated employee jobs estimates reflecting improvement to the method used to prorate this data from the EG level to one or more TAUs for businesses in the profiled population. Employee jobs are now allocated to each TAU using proration factors based on ABSBR employment, instead of the previous method which used proration factors based on Business Activity Statement (BAS) wages and salaries.

The employee jobs proration method has been applied from 2022-23 onwards. It improves the distribution of employee jobs across industries by removing bias from the previous method which prorated a higher proportion of employee jobs to TAUs with higher average wages and salaries industries and less employee jobs to TAUs with lower average wages and salaries industries. The largest revisions are:

• reduced number of employee jobs in Public administration and safety (for June 2025 around -9,000 or -1.0%) and Professional, scientific and technical services (for June 25 around -4,100 or -10.3%)
• increased number of employee jobs in Health care and social assistance (for June 2025 around 11,000 or 1.6%) and Education and training (for June 2025 around 5,200 or 0.7%).

Wages and salaries data continue to be prorated from EG to TAUs using proration factors based on BAS wages and salaries.

The ABS recommends that analysis of previously published estimates be refreshed with data from this release.

• The 2025-26 release of Public Sector Employment and Earnings includes the Refinement of the employee jobs allocation method used for profiled businesses with multi-state operations, enhancing the quality of employee job estimates.

• Refinements made to the salary sacrifice model inputs to ensure continued robustness and coverage of this data item. Salary sacrifice is an earnings component of the published cash wages and salaries series.

• Data source was changed from a sampled survey to payroll data, as the newly named Public Sector Employment and Earnings was released for 2021-22 and 2022-23 financial years. The new data source is the Australian Taxation Office's Single Touch Payroll (STP)
• STP estimates published in November 2023 for the 2021-22 financial year replace the experimental STP data published in late 2022 for the same period.

• Last release for the Survey of Employment and Earnings. This is the final point in the series using data sourced from a sampled survey
• Experimental estimates for the 2021-22 financial year using STP data are released.

• The new annual release was renamed as the Survey of Employment and Earnings, and published annual data from the 2007-8 financial year.

• June 2007 was the last quarterly release of Wage and Salary Earners, Public Sector, Australia.

• Quarterly survey commenced, based on the ABS Business Register.

In November 2023, the first Public Sector Employment and Earnings (PSEE) estimates were published using data sourced from the Australian Taxation Office’s (ATO) Single Touch Payroll (STP). This marked a change from the Survey of Employment and Earnings (SEE) data that was directly collected from businesses/organisations via a sampled survey. The PSEE data series starts from the 2021-22 financial year, replacing the SEE data series from 2022-23. Estimates for 2021-22 are available for both the PSEE and SEE.

The conceptual basis for PSEE STP based estimates has been aligned with SEE in all aspects where practical. Methods have been developed to:

• Ensure effective alignment with the conceptual basis for SEE and
• Maximise the value of using STP data, which is administrative data that is close to a complete census of public sector businesses (as well as most private sector businesses).

Although every effort has been made to produce estimates on the same basis, data will not align exactly given the different data sources, processes and methods. The tables below summarise key similarities and differences between SEE and PSEE.

Detailed information on the differences described in the table above are listed below:

• The data sources are different. SEE collected reported payroll data from public sector businesses/organisations for statistical purposes, while STP data reflects payroll reporting to the ATO for taxation (and other) purposes.
• The STP data needs to be transformed through a few steps including imputation, aggregation of employee level data to the ABN and quality assurance editing before it can be used to produce PSEE estimates. SEE data was transformed from a sample of reporting units and as such was subject to sampling error.
• For the ABS Maintained Population, PSEE requires an ABN-TAU mapping and proration method to distribute ABN level input data to match the units model, enabling it to make use of the ABS Frame classifications. SEE received the reported data at the ABS unit’s model level as requested for a selected business.
• Historically, SEE included the defence force Australian Public Sector (APS) employees only. PSEE includes all APS and Australian Defence Force (ADF) personnel, as a split is not available in STP data. This increases data in areas of Commonwealth government, all states/territories and the Public administration and safety industry. Information on the size of the ADF and APS components of the Australian defence force is available in the Department of Defence Annual Reports.
• One of the components of cash wages and salaries includes salary sacrifice. STP phase 1 data has some limitations and is not able to provide a complete measure of salary sacrifice. As such, until STP phase 2 data is mature enough to use, salary sacrifice amounts will be modelled for PSEE using other available ABS data. For more information see the section above on Data collection.
• Finally, PSEE employee jobs is a count of employees paid positive STP wages and salaries or salary sacrifice in the month of June. This differs slightly to SEE which measured the number of employee jobs paid in the final pay period of the financial year.

A key difference between PSEE and SEE are accounted for by the broader scope of the Department of Defence in PSEE. A smaller contributor is the slight difference in employee jobs scope.

For more information on the sources and methods used for the replaced Survey of Employment and Earnings, go to Employment and Earnings, Methodology

The 2021-22 financial year is the only period that data is available for both SEE and PSEE. For a comparison of this period, go to Data Source Comparison, SEE & PSEE.

Recording wages when they are earned, accrued or incurred regardless of when payment is made or received. 

A register of all Australian businesses and organisations maintained by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) for the purpose of producing statistical frames and business demography outputs. It contains identifying and classificatory data for each business and organisation.

Information to populate the ABS Business Register is largely sourced from the Australian Business Register.

The ABSBR consists of two subpopulations, the profiled population and the non-profiled population. The ABS Business Register uses an economic units model to describe the characteristics of businesses and the structural relationships between related businesses.

A unique identifier. To be entitled to an ABN, an organisation must be one or more of the following:

• a company registered under the Corporations Act 2001,
• an entity carrying on an enterprise in Australia,
• a government entity,
• a non-profit sub-entity for Goods and Services Tax purposes, or
• a superannuation fund.

A non-resident entity may be entitled to an ABN if they are carrying on an enterprise in Australia and/or, in the course of carrying on an enterprise, the entity makes sales that are connected with Australia.

The data store containing details about businesses and organisations that have registered for an Australian Business Number. More information can be found on the ABR website. 

Recording the wage payment in the pay period when the payment was received by the employee. 

Remuneration for time worked or work done and for time not worked, such as annual and other types of paid leave. Comprises regular and irregular payments, including salary sacrificed amounts. Wages and salaries in cash are gross amounts, that is, before tax and other deductions. Employer contributions to superannuation and severance and termination payments are excluded.

All public sector units controlled by the Australian Government are classified to the Commonwealth Level of Government. This includes government units controlled by the Australian Government, public financial corporations controlled by the Australian Government and Public non-financial corporations controlled by the Australian Government. Those bodies run jointly by the Commonwealth government and State governments are classified to Commonwealth. 

Persons who worked for a public or private sector employer and received remuneration in wages or salary, or are paid a retainer fee by there employer and worked on a commission basis, for tips, piece-rates or payment in kind. 

A job for which the occupant receives remuneration in wages, salary, payment in kind, or piece rates. In PSEE, an employee job is derived from the existence of positive STP wages and salaries or salary sacrifice payments in the month of June, from public sector employers.

Organisations with one or more employees.

An institutional unit covering all the operations within Australia's economic territory of legal entities under common control. Control is defined in Corporations legislation. Majority ownership is not required for control to be exercised. An EG may have one or more TAUs. 

State and territory based on a business’ employing locations sourced from the ABSBR. 

A homogenous grouping of economic activities undertaken to produce goods and services. The Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification is used to classify an entity to an industry based on its dominant activity. 

The broadest grouping of industries within the Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification. The main purpose of the industry division level is to provide a limited number of categories, which give a broad overall picture of the economy. There are 19 mutually exclusive divisions. For more information refer to Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification. 

All public sector units controlled by a local government are classified to the Local Level of Government. This includes government units controlled by a local government, public financial corporations controlled by a local government and public non-financial corporations controlled by a local government. Local government units are usually known as councils and are constituted through Local Government legislation. They are established to govern articulated regions within the state or territory known variously as districts, municipalities, shires, or areas. The power to create or vary these regions usually lies with the Governor General, State Governor or a Commonwealth Minister. 

The vast majority of businesses included on the ABSBR are in the non-profiled population. Most of these businesses have simple structures that are suitable for ABS statistical purposes at the Australian Business Number (ABN) level. For the non-profiled population, one ABN equates to one business.

For a small number of businesses, the ABN unit is not suitable for ABS economic statistics purposes and the ABS maintains its own economic units structure through direct contact with businesses. These businesses constitute the profiled population and are represented by Type of Activity Units (TAUs). This population consists of large, complex and diverse groups of businesses, known as enterprise groups. 

The Public sector comprises all government units and units controlled by government. For more information, refer to Standard Economic Sector Classifications of Australia (SESCA). 

The STP system sends taxation and superannuation information from a business' STP-enabled payroll or accounting software to the ATO as a business runs its payroll. 

All public sector units controlled by state/territory governments are classified to the State Level of Government. This includes government units controlled by a state/territory government, public financial corporations controlled by a state/territory government and public non-financial corporations controlled by a state/territory. 

Termination dates associated with each employee as reported through Single Touch Payroll. 

A TAU consists of one or more business entities, sub-entities or branches of a business that can be grouped according to production activity, and can report a minimum set of data items. TAUs are classified according to the industry of their main activity. The relationship between TAUs and their associated legal entities (ABNs) may be one-to-one, many-to-one, or one-to-many.