Monthly Population Survey

If you are reading this, it's likely to be because you have found a letter in your mailbox telling you that your household has been selected to be in the Monthly Population Survey. This is an important national survey that collects vital information about Australia's workforce and has been run every month by the Australian Bureau of Statistics since 1960.

The nation's employment and unemployment figures are produced from this survey. Information collected from the survey tells us how many people in Australia have work, how many don't have work, and how many are looking for work (or more work than they currently have). Results of this survey are used by government, local councils, industry business, and community groups to make important decisions that can directly affect you, your family and people you know.

We need your help to get it right. Every month around 26,000 households participate in this survey. Unless everyone plays their part we can't get a true picture of employment in Australia. That is why, no matter what your circumstances are, we need your whole household to complete the survey. It's very important the survey captures ALL Australians, whether young or old, people who have jobs, people who don't have jobs and people who are retired, to make sure everyone is represented in survey results and services are provided in the right areas for those who need them most.

The easiest way to complete the Monthly Population Survey is online.

If you have been selected in this survey you will receive a registration letter in the mail that contains instructions and a secure Form Access Code for you to register online at www.abs.gov.au/survey. Once you have created your ABS survey account and registered your contact details for the Monthly Population Survey, we will send you an email each month when your survey is ready to complete.

If you are having trouble registering, completing your survey, or have lost your registration letter please call us on 1800 060 911 and an ABS officer will be happy to assist you.

If you would prefer you can also complete the survey over the phone or in person with an ABS interviewer. If this is the best option for you, please call us on 1800 060 911, or register your contact details online using the instructions and secure Form Access Code included in your registration letter. After you have registered, we can contact you on your preferred number at a time that is convenient for you.

If we don't hear from you an interviewer may come to your home to make contact with your household and complete the survey. ABS interviewers are here to help. Please treat them with courtesy and consideration. ABS interviewers will always identify themselves as an ABS officer, and show you their official ABS photo identification. They will conduct the interview using a laptop computer. It would be appreciated if you could provide a table and chair to the interviewer.

We have done extensive planning on our community engagement and protecting people selected in our surveys, as well as our interviewers, during Coronavirus (COVID-19). If you would like to know more about how the ABS is responding to the spread of COVID-19 please see how we are keeping the community safe during COVID-19.

Every month about 26,000 households participate in the Monthly Population Survey. We take a sample of households from all over Australia so that we can build a picture that includes people from all backgrounds and lifestyles. To do this, we use a fair statistical method to randomly select households. This means everyone has an equal chance of being selected for this important national survey. Once a household has been selected, another household cannot be substituted in its place as other households have already had their chance of selection, and changing the random selection could mean some parts of the community are under or over represented.

It is very important that all selected households complete the survey to make sure the survey results represent the whole community, so that decisions made based on the results of this survey, such as the services provided by government, local councils and community groups, are made on the right information.

If you are interested in the sampling methodology used to select households for the Monthly Population Survey, see here for more information.

The Monthly Population Survey collects a range of information to produce important information about Australia's workforce, such as our employment and unemployment figures, and enable important decisions about employment, industry support and education.

The main part of the survey asks about your employment:

• If you are employed, you will be asked about the hours you worked, your occupation, and the type of industry in which you work.
• If you are looking for work, you will be asked questions on topics such as steps you have taken to look for work, and the length of time you have been looking for work.
• If you are retired, not working or looking for work, you will be asked questions to clarify your current situation and future intentions.

These questions are asked each month to measure changes in peoples circumstances over time, so while it may feel a little repetitive, it is very important that we capture whether there have been any changes from month to month so we can make sure we are producing reliable statistics and measure changes in the community accurately.

In some months you'll be asked some additional questions on various topics including employment arrangements, education or childcare arrangements.

These questions allow us to produce a range of statistics about Australia's workforce. Full results of the survey are available free of charge for everyone on the ABS website in Labour Force, Australia (cat no 6202.0).

Your participation in this survey will help us to produce statistics about matters that affect the whole community, including work, unemployment, training, retirement, looking after the family and home.

The Monthly Population Survey provides information about the Australian population and workforce on a regular basis. The nation's official employment and unemployment figures are produced from this survey.

Government departments use the information from this survey to identify how and where they should be using public resources. They use this information to check how different groups of people in the Australian community are impacted by existing policies, and to inform future changes to policy. Industry, trade unions and academics also use information from this survey for research and to inform important decisions about employment services, industry support and education.

By taking part you ensure that your experiences and circumstances become an important part of the bigger picture of life in Australia today, and help to shape policies that affect everyone in the nation.

Full results of the survey are available free of charge for everyone on the ABS website in Labour Force, Australia (cat no 6202.0).

All household members over the age of 15 are included in the Monthly Population Survey. The questions can usually be answered for all of your household members in a few minutes and the answers can be provided by any adult member of the household, or all members of the house can complete their own section online, over the phone or in person.

You will be included in the survey once a month for eight months. Completing the survey for eight months is important as this allows us to measure any changes in your household's situation over time. This information is combined with other households to enable the ABS to produce reliable labour force statistics and measure change accurately at national and state levels.

Most months the survey will be very quick and completed in less than 10 minutes. Some months may have some extra questions about important topics relevant to the workforce, and how long these take can vary person to person.

If you move away from your address during the eight months you will not need to continue completing the survey as the new occupants of the selected address will replace you in the survey.

The questions included in this survey are being asked under the authority of the Census and Statistics Act 1905. Under the Act, you are obliged to provide the information being requested, unless otherwise stated.

If you do not complete and submit your form, or answer the questions asked by the interviewer, you may be issued with a Notice of Direction, which is a legal direction to complete the Monthly Population Survey. Failure to comply with a Notice of Direction is an offence under the Census and Statistics Act 1905 and can result in prosecution and fines of up to $313 for each day you don't participate. It is also an offence to provide false or misleading statements or information. The penalty is a fine of up to $3,130.

An ABS interviewer who speaks the language of the householder will conduct the interview if possible. Alternatively, arrangements can be made to organise an interpreter to conduct the interview. Please call 1800 060 911 (free call, excluding mobile phones) so that these arrangements can be made.

Yes, if you are retired you represent an important group of Australians, and we need your information to make sure ALL Australians are represented in survey results. To provide accurate statistics we need to survey a sample of households that provide a balanced representation of all households across Australia. If we didn't include retired people in the survey we would be unable to collect accurate information on the proportion of Australians who are looking for work, as estimates would not take into account the whole population. So while we understand that in most cases there will be no change month to month in your answers to questions, it is still very important that we check in with you each month to make sure the same people are living at the address and there have been no other changes to your work status.

By participating you help to ensure accurate statistics are produced to understand Australia's labour market, and services are provided in the right areas for those who need them most. If you need help completing the survey online or would prefer to complete over the phone please call 1800 060 911 and an ABS officer will assist you.

The ABS takes the security of the information you provide to us very seriously.

All ABS employees have signed a legally enforceable Undertaking of Fidelity and Secrecy in which they agree to keep any information, including personal information which they may deal with in the course of their work, private and confidential. This agreement applies to ABS employees for the rest of their lives, even if they leave the ABS. The penalty for breaching this is two years imprisonment, a $37,560 fine, or both.

The ABS complies with the Australian Privacy Principles. If you believe the ABS has breached these principles, you can find information on how to lodge a complaint here. This link also provides more detail on the ABS's own Privacy Policy. 

The information you provide may be combined with the information from other respondents to produce vital statistics about Australian households.

The ABS is committed to maximising the value of data and statistics. One way to do this is to combine data from two or more sources together. This is known as data integration. The ABS does this to create new statistics and insights that help address important questions about Australia’s communities, economy and environment, and to save you time when responding to surveys.

The new insights created through data integration assist policy makers and researchers to better understand Australian families, communities, industry and the economy. This wider understanding can help to improve the development and delivery of government services and programs in areas such as health, infrastructure, housing and other community services.

By reusing existing data, we can also reduce the amount or frequency of information needed from our surveys, saving you time, and using public money more effectively.

We take the security of your personal information seriously. Data integration protects your privacy by removing personal information before analysis.

You can learn more about data integration of the Monthly Population Survey by visiting our Data Integration page or the Multi-Agency Data Integration Project.

You will be sent a survey guide and registration letter in the mail to advise that you have been selected in the Monthly Population Survey and explain the purpose of the survey. For any personal visits our staff will always identify themselves, show you their official ABS photo identification and clearly explain the information they are seeking and how this will be used. ABS interviewers are here to help. Please treat them with courtesy and consideration.

You may receive calls from numbers that you are not familiar with including mobile phones or "unknown" numbers. This is because many of our Interviewers are teleworkers and use ABS authorised mobile phones and office phones, connected to our highly secure networks, to conduct interviews over the phone.

We may source your phone number from the Sensis White Pages if we need to contact you. This information is kept secure and confidential in accordance with the ABS Privacy Policy. For more information on how your privacy will be protected please see the Privacy Impact Assessment on linkage of the Address Register with Census or contact data.

Remember - The ABS will never ask you to provide or confirm your bank details or tax file number (TFN).

If you are concerned you can call us on 1800 060 911 and we can confirm your selection in the survey and the identity of the staff member who is contacting you.

Please see our Survey Account Help page for assistance with technical difficulties and answers to frequently asked questions on creating and using an ABS Survey Account.

You can also call us on 1800 060 911 and one of our team will be happy to assist you.

Your secure Form Access Code is included in the letter that you will receive in the mail.

You'll need this code to link the Monthly Population Survey to your ABS Survey Account and complete your contact details form. If you are having trouble finding or using your Form Access Code please call 1800 060 911 and an ABS officer will be able to assist you.

Yes you can. There is a process in place to allow survey participants to indicate a response other than ‘male’ or ‘female’, by calling the ABS contact centre on 1800 060 911 and completing the interview over the telephone. This is a temporary process until the survey questionnaire and related systems can be updated.

The ABS is committed to implementing the 'Standard for Sex, Gender, Variations of Sex Characteristics and Sexual Orientation Variables, 2020' for its household-based surveys, including the Monthly Population Survey.

If you need help or more information about the Monthly Population Survey please call us on 1800 060 911 Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm AEST.

For help outside these hours please leave a message with your contact details and we will call you back to assist you.