Presented by Jennifer Humphrys, Australian Bureau of Statistics
Venue: Office for National Statistics, 1 Drummond Gate, London, SW1V 2QQ
The Australian Labour Account has been developed to provide a framework for integrating labour related data from a number of sources including household survey, business survey and administrative data. It provides a time series of estimates of the number of employed persons, the number of jobs, hours worked and the income earned for each industry in one coherent framework. It builds on the International Labour Organisation (ILO) fundamentals and expands them to ensure consistency with the System of National Accounts (2008 SNA). The Labour Account also extends the analytical utility of National Accounts data, through providing a labour market-specific perspective. The result is internally consistent estimates of key labour market variables, which more effectively enable the description and analysis of the state and dynamics of the labour market. These core variables can help users make sense of seemingly inconsistent labour related data, which are often based on different reference periods, populations, concepts, definitions and methodologies. Consistent data on employment, hours and incomes will assist in assuring the quality of national accounts production and income data. A better alignment of hours worked with production (gross output and gross value added) at an industry level will improve the reliability of both labour and multi-factor productivity statistics. Labour Account tables are likely to be of most value to people engaged in the use of labour statistics in macro-economic analysis, forecasting and in policy related research.
Jennifer Humphrys is the Director of Labour Market Statistics at the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).