Labour statistics recent and upcoming developments

This page provides an overview of recent and upcoming developments in the ABS Labour Statistics Program, including information on the many changes and developments, and emerging priorities, that will help shape labour statistics into the future.

It starts with a quick overview of additional work to address priority labour market data gaps (which was funded by the Australian Government following the release of the Working Future White Paper), and then provides updates on a range of current work and recent releases of interest.

Like the rest of the Guide to labour statistics, this page will be a 'living document' which is updated periodically, to provide a contemporary reference on progress and priorities within the program. Older updates will be moved to the 'Previous updates' section at the end of this page.

If you have any questions, would like further information on any of the updates, or would like to provide feedback on the usefulness or content of this page, please contact us via labour.statistics@abs.gov.au.

• The ABS engaged Indigenous Professional Services (IPS) to consult with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in late 2024 through to early 2025, about the perceptions and attitudes on the use of integrated data to address labour market data gaps for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and communities.
• The ABS would like to acknowledge and thank those Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who participated in the consultation process and shared their views with IPS.
• Feedback so far highlights the strong support for addressing labour market data gaps for Aboriginal and Torres Strait people and highlighted key areas of consideration and benefit to the implementation of integrated data sets in addressing data gaps for communities, with an emphasis on further work on Census and administrative data to improve the efficacy and potential of the approach. The importance of aligning to the principles of the Framework for Governance of Indigenous Data (GID) and Indigenous Data Sovereignty and to continuing to be open and transparent and ensuring information is returned back to communities were also emphasised during the consultations.
• The ABS is engaging with the ABS Round Table on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Statistics, The Coalition of Peaks, Labour Statistics Advisory Group and Government partners to plan the next phase of the project. We will share more information as our plans progress.

• Public Sector Employment and Earnings (PSEE) was released on 6 November 2025, adding employee jobs as at June 2025 and cash wages and salaries for the 2024-25 financial year. PSEE is the source of the highest quality public sector employee jobs and cash wages and salaries estimates, along with the Labour Account which produces quarterly estimates for both public and private sectors.
• The release of the Monthly Employee Earnings Indicator on 19 November 2025 will include updated methods which improve the quality of state and territory estimates across the time series. The February 2026 release will include the new employee jobs measure, which provides new insights into jobs growth following the retirement of the weekly Payroll Jobs indexes in July 2025.

• On 27 June 2025, the ABS released an additional Information paper expanding the model of unpaid care to include adult care and a time series, and modelling of sex and age dimensions in the Labour Account. This followed the November 2024 release of an Information paper on initial concepts, methods and experimental estimates of the total hours spent on unpaid care and their monetary value, followed by a public consultation process.
• In 2026, the ABS will provide a further update on measuring unpaid care, and incorporate sex and age modelling with the quarterly Labour Account.

• The Labour Force Survey TableBuilder was updated on 19 June 2025, with data now covering the period August 2006 to April 2025.

• A new Hours worked guide was published on 26 March 2025. This provides insight about hours worked data sources, and how to choose the best hours worked data to suit your needs.
• A new Labour Force Survey products and data item guide was published on 18 March 2025, providing a comprehensive overview of Labour Force Survey products, the data items available and ways to access LFS data.

• The first edition of the Occupation Standard Classification for Australia (OSCA) was released on 6 December 2024.  Use of the new updated classification will be reflected progressively in official labour market statistics from August 2026 and in 2026 Census data outputs, to improve visibility of new and emerging occupations. This follows the completion of a comprehensive review of the Australian and New Zealand Standard Clasisifcation of Occupations (ANZSCO) in December 2024.

• New modelled SA4 labour force estimates, by age and sex, for the period January 2012 onwards, were published in Labour Force, Australia, Detailed on 24 July 2025.
• Backcast modelled regional labour force estimates by SA4, for the period 2012 onwards, were published in the Labour Force detailed release on 27 February 2025.

• An article on seasonal adjustment and changing seasonality in labour force statistics was published with the January 2025 LFS release. This builds on information included in the April 2024 release and in other ABS releases, such as Retail trade statistics.
• Improvements to Labour Force estimation were implemented with the February 2024 release to better account for difficult to enumerate parts of the sample (around 2% of the sample). Further enhancements were implemented in August 2024.

• A Spotlight on the Australian labour market over the last 30 years article was published alongside the September 2024 Labour Account release. The article provides a series of summary snapshots exploring changes in the Australian labour market between September quarter 1994 and September quarter 2024 using Labour Account data.
• Indicative state estimates for jobs and hours worked were released again alongside the June quarter 2024 Labour Account release. This demonstrates potential for future disaggregation of the Labour Account, with additional data and investment.

• State and territory by sector estimates of total wages and salaries paid by employers were added to the latest release of Monthly Employee Earnings Indicator on 21 May 2025.