All data in this application are sourced from the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ (ABS) Weekly Payroll Jobs and Wages in Australia publication.

Note

The ABS Weekly Payroll Jobs and Wages provides estimates of employee jobs. The ABS monthly Labour Force survey presents estimates of employed (and unemployed) persons. The major difference being employed people can hold more than one job at a time. In addition, the Weekly Payroll Jobs and Wages data are based on an Australian Tax Office administrative collection not a survey. Therefore, it is important to note that the estimates in this dashboard cannot be compared to the ABS labour force statistics.

Introduction

The ABS have released experimental weekly estimates of employee jobs and wages. These estimates provide up-to-date indicative information on the economic impact since the outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) on employees, including changes in paid employee jobs, changes in total wages paid, and changes in average weekly wages per job.

Source of data

The ABS have sourced these experimental estimates from Single Touch Payroll (STP) data. STP is provided to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) by businesses with STP-enabled payroll or accounting software each time the business runs its payroll. The data are combined with other administrative data from the Australian taxation system to determine the additional age and sex attributes of the employees.

Scope

The experimental estimates are based on all paid employee jobs reported to the ATO through STP, where the employee has received a payment in the reference week. Estimates are for employees only. Owner managers of unincorporated enterprises are not included in these estimates as they are not in scope of STP-enabled software reporting to the ATO.

Year-end data variability

At year-end, payroll jobs and wages estimates usually see larger seasonal changes and can be affected by a higher degree of reporting variability. In this release, wages estimates across year-end have seen additional variability due to an increased incidence of one-off payments during December 2022 and January 2023. ABS website.

State/territory/SA4 location

State/territory and Statistical Area Level 4 (SA4) estimates are based on the individual's residential address as stated on their income tax return. Where an address is not available from the income tax return the residential address as reported on the STP file is used.
SA4 geography are based on the Australian Statistical Geography Standard, 2016.

Industry classification

The industry division estimates have been derived using the ABS Statistical Business Register. The 19 industry divisions are based on the Australia and New Zealand Standard Industry Classification (ANZSIC), 2006 edition.

Sex classification

The gender information in the underlying data includes jobholders who were identified as a gender other than ‘male’ and ‘female’, or where no gender was specified. These data are not included in the calculation of male and female estimates but are included in all other calculations.

Age group derivation

The method used by the ABS to determine age has been revised for the 16 January 2021 release, resulting in updated age group indexes. This update particularly impacts the time series of the youngest (aged 15-19 years) and oldest (aged 70 years and over) persons age groups. The ABS recommends that analyses of previously published age group estimates be refreshed with the data from the latest release. For more detail, see the Age derivation update subsection of Data limitations and revisions.

Imputation method update

The imputation method has been updated in this release and applied across all historical data, resulting in revisions across the time series. All indexes (including component indexes) are affected by the updated method. The ABS recommends that analyses of previously published estimates be refreshed with the data from this release. For more information, see the Imputation update subsection of Methods review.

Methodology

STP data are reported at the time of payment as opposed to the time the payment was earned. For example, some employees are paid weekly, fortnightly, monthly, quarterly or infrequently. The ABS use the start and end date of the payment to estimate a daily pay rate which is then used to transform the data, where possible, into a weekly payment. For employees paid fortnightly and monthly, their previous calculated daily rate will be imputed for the current period.
These data are therefore subject to revisions. Revising underlying data across the time series allows the estimates to incorporate newly available business reported data and replace previously imputed data with actual data.

Indexation

The estimates are based on original data (seasonally adjusted and trend data are not yet available) and have been transformed to indexes to present changes in the labour market during the COVID-19 period.
Australia recorded its 100th confirmed coronavirus case during the week ending 14th March 2020. This is the week that is used as the reference period for constructing the indexes and given an index value of 100.0.
Weekly index values are all relative to the reference period and allow for easy comparison of changes over time.

Further information

For further information please refer to the ABS methodology: ABS Methodology