Appendix A: Comparison of LSAC and ABS employment estimates

In this appendix, the employment rates estimated from LSAC are benchmarked against estimates from the 2001 Census of Population and Housing and the monthly Labour Force Survey collected by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).⁷² A summary of how employment is defined in LSAC, the Labour Force Surveys and the Census is provided in Table A1.

Table A1: ABS and LSAC definitions of employment
ABS Labour Force Surveys	ABS 2001 Census	LSAC Wave 1
Employed comprises those who, in the previous week: worked for one hour or more for pay, profit, commission or payment in kind, in a job or business or on a farm; or worked for one hour or more without pay in a family business or on a farm; or were employees who had a job but were not at work and were away from work for less than four weeks up to the end of the reference week; or away from work for more than four weeks up to the end of the reference week and received pay for some or all of the four week period to the end of the reference week; or away from work as a standard work or shift arrangement; or on strike or locked out; or on workers' compensation and expected to be returning to their job; or were employers or own-account workers, who had a job, business or farm, but were not at work.	The Census question asks, last week, did the person have a full-time or part-time job of any kind? Employed are those who select any one of: yes, worked for payment or profit; yes, but absent on holidays, on paid leave, on strike or temporarily stood down; or yes, unpaid work in a family business.	Employed comprises those who, in the previous week: worked for one hour or more in a job, business or farm; or worked for one hour or more without pay in a family business; or had a job, business or farm that was away from because of holidays, sickness or any other non-maternity/parental reason. A maternity/parental reason was said to be those absent from work but on paid or unpaid maternity or parental leave, or on leave without pay.

In the Labour Force Survey, those with a job from which they were absent are classified as being employed if they meet conditions relating to extent of attachment to their job. Given that the Census is self-enumerated, it is not possible to know to what extent people who are on an extended absence from work record themselves as having a job they were away from.⁷³ However, it is likely that those on an extended unpaid absence from work would not select the 'on leave' option, given that this option specifically refers to 'paid leave'.

The LSAC definition of employment varies with that of the precise ABS Labour Force Survey definition, due to the lack of information on the length of absence from work, and whether or not it was paid (except for maternity leave). The definition used excluded those parents who were on a maternity or parental-related leave (paid or unpaid maternity or parental leave, or leave without pay) from the employed. Those who reported being on any of these types of leave were classified as not in the labour force. This was to clearly differentiate between those parents (in particular, mothers with infant cohort children) who had (re)commenced employment following child-bearing and those that had not. Most of the mothers on these types of leave were on unpaid leave and would ordinarily have been defined by the ABS as not in the labour force anyway.⁷⁴ Only those on paid maternity leave (only 1.0 per cent of mothers in the infant cohort and negligible for the 4–5 year olds) would have been classified as employed by the ABS but not by the definition used in this report.

In contrast, other types of leave were assumed to be unrelated to a maternity or parental leave period, and so were assumed to be of short duration and of the type that the ABS would normally classify as being employed. Consequently, the employed include those who had a job but were absent from work for any of the following reasons:

workers' compensation
annual or recreation leave
own illness or sick leave
on strike, locked out or industrial dispute
stood down
bad weather or plant breakdown
standard work arrangement
no work available
any other reason.

Being mindful of these definitional differences, Table A2 compares estimates of employment rates from the 2001 Census, the Labour Force Survey and LSAC. Labour Force Survey data are only available by age of the youngest child in five-year groupings, so the percentages employed among parents with a child under 5 years of age were calculated from the 2001 Census and also for LSAC⁷⁵ to compare with the percentage employed for this population from the Labour Force Survey. Two years of Labour Force Survey data have been given: 2001 to compare with Census data and 2004 to compare with LSAC data. Also in Table A2, 2001 Census data and LSAC data are used to calculate the percentages employed for mothers and fathers with a child aged under 1 year. For LSAC this was done using the infant cohort, excluding those families where the youngest child was aged 1 year or more. Also, 2001 Census and LSAC data were used to compare the figures for families with a youngest child aged 4—for LSAC this was based on those 4 year olds who had no younger siblings from the 4–5 year-old cohort.

Comparing the 2001 Census data with the Labour Force Survey data for 2001, the estimates are very similar (46.2 per cent from the Labour Force Survey for all mothers compared to 45.0 per cent from the 2001 Census, and for fathers, 88.9 and 88.6 per cent from these sources, respectively). This is despite the more stringent measurement of employment in the Labour Force Survey.

The 2004 LSAC estimate compares very well to the 2004 Labour Force Survey estimate, for mothers and fathers.

The analysis of parents of a child aged under 1 year also shows that the 2001 Census estimate is very similar to the LSAC estimate for all mothers, and for single and couple mothers. While it is somewhat lower than the LSAC estimate for fathers, this is consistent with changes between 2001 and 2004 (see 2001 and 2004 Labour Force Survey estimates for fathers).

Table A2: Employment rate of mothers and fathers by family type, families with children under 5 years, 2001 and 2004
Source	Mothers			Fathers Total
Source	Couple	Single	Total	Fathers Total
	Youngest aged under 5 years
Labour Force Survey 2001	49.4	29.5	46.2	88.9
Census 2001	48.2	28.3	45.0	88.6^(a)
Labour Force Survey 2004	48.2	27.7	44.8	91.4
LSAC 2004	47.1	28.4	44.9	92.3
	Youngest aged under 1 year
Census 2001	37.1	14.8	34.6	89.6^(a)
LSAC 2004	38.1	14.9	35.7	92.2
	Youngest aged 4 years
Census 2001	57.3	35.1	52.6	88.8^(a)
LSAC 2004	63.1	44.4	59.7	92.6

Source: LSAC 2004, Wave 1; unpublished cross-tabulations from ABS (2001) and ABS (2005b).

Note: (a) Census data are based on partnered fathers only as comparable data were not readily available for all fathers.

There are larger differences between the Census and LSAC estimates for parents with a youngest child aged four, with LSAC producing higher estimates. While the exact reasons for these differences are unknown, it may be that employment has increased between 2001 and 2004 for mothers with this aged child. Further, the LSAC estimate is likely to be affected by having somewhat higher representation of older children in this age group, and also having a more highly educated sample than the population in general.

Overall, it appears that the LSAC employment measures gives results that are quite consistent with ABS labour force data.

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