This page contains a number of statistical briefs and Excel-based tools produced by the Department's Queensland Labour Economics Office. They focus on basic labour force status and employment indicators for the State of Queensland and its component Statistical Regions.
State-level Seasonally Adjusted and Trend Labour Force Status
This brief in MS Word format is produced each month with the release of 'headline' seasonally adjusted and trend labour force data by the ABS. The brief contains data at the State level on a range of basic labour force indicators, presented in a number of tables and time series charts. Comparisons with the corresponding national figures are given in some cases.
Monthly labour force brief
Regional Labour Force Indicators
This Excel workbook is based on the monthly 'Detailed Release' of labour force data by the ABS. It includes a full range of original (ie unadjusted) data on basic labour force indicators, including local unemployment rates, down to the level of Statistical Regions. The 'detailed release' follows one week after the release of 'headline' seasonally adjusted and trend data at State level.
The Excel workbook presents the key regional data in a set of standard tables and time series charts. Three month averaging of original data is used to reduce the level of sampling volatility without losing a fairly sharp time focus. However, seasonal influences can be very significant with three month averaging.
The "Geography" tab at the front of this workbook contains a concordance between Statistical Regions and more widely understood areas, such as Local Government Areas.
Regional labour force statistics
Regional Industry of Employment Data
This is an Excel-based tool containing data on broad industries of employment at the regional level. It is a graphical tool that can be applied to each of the Statistical Regions of Queensland and is updated each quarter when the ABS releases new data. Statistical Regions are the same areas used in the main monthly regional labour force data release.
The Excel workbook compares the industry composition of employment in a selected region with the State as a whole, and plots recent employment growth and the gender composition of employment by major industry division. Macros must be enabled for it to work and the area of interest selected from the drop-down list.
The industry of employment data in this workbook have been averaged over four quarters to minimise the volatility seen in results for a single quarter. For this reason, 'Employment Growth' represents the difference between the average over four quarters of data to the current quarter and the average of the preceding four quarters. This comes at the cost of a loss of sharp time focus in what can be a rapidly changing labour market.
Note: Although potentially useful in identifying industries experiencing strong growth, percentage growth figures within individual Industry Divisions are unreliable when the total number of employed persons is comparatively small (eg in Electricity, Gas and Water Supply at the regional level) due to high relative sampling errors.
Detailed Industry and Occupation of Employment at State Level
These are two Excel-based tools containing data on the number of people employed in Queensland as a whole in particular detailed industries and occupations of employment. The data are presented as time series charts of the numbers employed over the last seven years. These tools are updated each quarter when the ABS releases new data.
Industries of employment are broken down to the Group level (ie 3-digit codes) of the ANZSIC 1993 classification system, while the occupations of employed people are broken down to the Unit Group (ie 4-digit codes) of the ASCO Second Edition classification system. Macros must be enabled for these Excel tools to work and the industry or occupation of interest must be selected from the drop-down list.
Original data from the Quarterly Labour Force Survey have been used in these workbooks (plotted as a thin blue line) but the charts include a moving average trendline over the preceding four quarters (the thicker red line) which often gives a better indication of longer term movements in the number of people employed. The degree of 'jaggedness' in the blue line gives a rough visual indication of the potential scale of the sampling errors involved, and hence the reliability of the numbers. Generally, only large occupations/industries, or groupings of them, produce resonably reliable results.
Detailed industry of employment
Duration of Unemployment, Queensland Regions
This Excel workbook presents data on long-term unemployment rates, overall unemployment rates and the average length of unemployment in graphical format. The workbook is based on the monthly 'detailed release' of labour force data by the ABS.
Twelve month averaging of original labour force data has been used throughout this workbook. For instance, the time series graphs use a twelve month moving average over the preceding year.
Twelve month averaging has been used because of significant month-to-month volatility in smaller categories, such as the number of very long term unemployed in a single region. It has the additional advantage of minimising seasonal factors in the underlying original data. However, it comes at a cost in terms of time focus and will result in discrepancies with our main monthly regional labour force product, which is based on three month averaging.