Payroll Jobs

Latest release

Weekly payroll job indexes, sourced from Single Touch Payroll (STP) data

Reference period
Week ending 14 December 2024
Released
24/04/2025
  • Next Release 24/07/2025
    Payroll Jobs, Week ending 15 March 2025
  • Next Release 23/10/2025
    Payroll Jobs, Week ending 14 June 2025
  • Next Release 29/01/2026
    Payroll Jobs, Week ending 13 September 2025
  • View all releases

Key statistics

In the week ending 14 December 2024, payroll jobs:

  • decreased by 0.2% in the month from 16 November 2024
  • increased by 0.3% in the year from 16 December 2023

Month change periods represent the index change between the reference week and four weeks prior, whereas annual change represents the index change from 52 weeks prior.

Estimates of change throughout this release are calculated using un-rounded index values. They may differ from, though are more accurate than, change calculated from rounded values.

The final reference week for this release is the 14 December 2024. The next quarterly release reference week will be the 15 March 2025. 

Future of the Payroll Jobs release

The ABS is developing a new monthly employee jobs measure, for inclusion in the Monthly Employee Earnings Indicator in the the first half of 2026.  The ABS is considering the retirement of the Payroll Jobs release as part of the transition to the new measure. See the Upcoming changes section in this release for more information.

Update to employer characteristics in March quarter 2025 release

The next release, scheduled on 24 July 2025, will include updated employer characteristics - industry and employment size - which also reduces the number of payroll jobs with 'unknown' employer characteristics improving the quality of indexes that include these characteristics. Further detail is available in Upcoming changes.

Change periods

Interpreting drivers of index change

Impact of employer and jobholder characteristics updates

National

Percentage change in payroll jobs (a)
 Oct-24Nov-24Dec-24
Month change (%)-0.60.7-0.2
Year change (%)-0.60.00.3
  1. Refer to Change periods in the Key statistics section for detailed reference dates.

The 0.2% negative monthly movement to mid-December 2024 was influenced by a typical seasonal drop in payroll jobs in the Education and training industry at this time of year. 

  1. Indexed to the week ending 14 March 2020 (week 10 in 2020).
  2. Week 0 represents the weeks ending 4 January 2020, 2 January 2021, 1 January 2022, 31 December 2022 and 30 December 2023. Week 50 represents the weeks ending 19 December 2020, 18 December 2021, 17 December 2022, 16 December 2023 and 14 December 2024.
  3. There is greater variation in business payroll reporting around the change in financial years. Refer to End of financial year variability in the Factors affecting interpretation section of the Methodology for more information.

State and territory

All geographical areas in this release represent the residential address of the jobholder.

In the month to 14 December 2024, payroll jobs change varied across states and territories.

  • The largest decrease (-1.2%) was in the Northern Territory.
  • New South Wales and Victoria were flat (0.0%).
  • The only increase was in Tasmania (1.3%).
  1. Refer to Change periods in the Key statistics section for detailed reference dates.

Month change

Annual change

Age group

In the month to 14 December 2024, the largest change in payroll jobs was worked by persons aged 15-19, up 2.4%.

Month change

Annual change

Industry

In the month to 14 December 2024, payroll jobs fell in 10 of 19 industries.

  • The largest decrease was in Education and training (-3.3%).
  • The largest increase was in Retail trade (1.3%).
  1. Industries ranked by percentage change in the latest month.
  2. Refer to Change periods in the Key statistics section for detailed reference dates.

Month change

Annual change

Industry subdivision

Time series estimates of payroll jobs by industry subdivision are presented as index values in Table 2 of the Data downloads. Refer to the Glossary in the Methodology for more detailed information on the industry classification.

Industry employment guide

Refer to the ABS Industry employment guide for more detailed information on the range of ABS labour measures, their purpose and how to use them.

Employment size

In the month to 14 December 2024, payroll jobs fell in all of the 3 employment size groups.

  • Employers with 200 employees and over had the smallest decrease (-0.1%).
  • Employers with 0-19 employees had the largest decrease (-0.8%).
     

Month change

Annual change

Data downloads

Table 1. Payroll jobs, indexes

State/territory, industry division and age groups. 

Table 2. Payroll jobs by industry subdivision, indexes

Industry division and subdivision. 

Table 3. Payroll jobs by employment size, indexes

State/territory and employment size groups. 

Distribution of characteristics

Selected distributions of jobholder and employer characteristics are included to aid interpretability of payroll job estimates.

Records with 'unknown' characteristics are excluded from the calculation of proportions. Refer to the Updating characteristic variables and Inclusion of unknown characteristics in the How data is transformed section of the Methodology for more information on the source, impact and proportion of unknowns.

Table 4. Payroll jobs distributions of characteristics, proportions

Previously named 'Table 20: Payroll jobs - characteristics distributions'. 

All data cubes

Upcoming changes

Future changes to this release

Further to changes previously advised in the 11 July 2024 release, the ABS is considering the retirement of the Payroll Jobs release, as part of transition to the new monthly employee jobs measure, to be included in the Monthly Employee Earnings Indicator release in the first half of 2026.

The new monthly employee jobs measure will provide new and complementary labour market insights into jobs growth and the composition of total wages and salaries paid by employers. The new measure will include level estimates, which have not previously been available for Payroll Jobs. Further information on the expected levels of detail in employee jobs outputs will be communicated in upcoming Monthly Employee Earnings Indicator releases.

Development and planning to produce the new weekly employee jobs estimates for week ending Saturday reference periods will be progressed after the release of monthly employee jobs. 

Further information will be included in the next Payroll Jobs release on 24 July 2025. If you would like to provide feedback or have questions, please contact us via labour.statistics@abs.gov.au.

Update to employer characteristics

The next release, scheduled on 24 July 2025, will include the periodic update of employer characteristics, reflecting a snapshot from the ABS Business Register as at December 2024. Information on how STP data are enhanced by the ABS through combining other administrative data to produce labour statistics, are found in the Updating characteristics variables subsection of How data is transformed.

The update will improve the quality of indexes that include industry, industry subdivision and employment size. This update will impact the indexes from the week ending 28 December 2024 onwards by refreshing employer characteristics and populating those which were 'unknown'.

Additional detail on the impacts of updating business characteristics will be included in the next release on 24 July 2025. Information on the impacts of the last update applied in the February 2024 release can be found in Update of employer characteristics.

Previous catalogue number

This release previously used catalogue number 6160.0.55.001.

Methodology

Scope

Payroll jobs of all businesses reporting through Single Touch Payroll (STP), regardless of the age or Australian residency status of the jobholder. 

Geography

Geography relates to the jobholder's residential address and is available for:

  • Australia total
  • States and territories

Source

Australian Taxation Office (ATO) Single Touch Payroll (STP) administrative data combined with ATO Client Register and ABS Business Register data.

Collection method

The ABS receives selected employer and employee level data from the ATO STP system, which are combined with employer and jobholder characteristics from the ABS Business Register and ATO Client Register. 

Concepts, sources and methods

A payroll job is a relationship between an employee and their employer where the employee is paid through STP-enabled payroll or accounting software. 

History of changes

Refer to the History of changes section. 

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