The most recent labour force numbers for September from the ABS were out yesterday. There is plenty of commentary and the usual political use and abuse of different statistics. There is also an interesting note from ABS at Insights from the original data.

The incoming rotation group in Queensland in September 2016 was noticeably different in its labour force characteristics to the group that it replaced, and to the rest of the Queensland sample rotation groups, with a greater level of influence on the current month’s estimate and movement estimate than usual.

Through the Composite Estimation process the ABS has temporarily reduced the influence of this rotation group for September estimates and this is reflected in original, seasonally adjusted and trend estimates. This means that the remaining 7/8 of the Queensland sample will have a higher influence and contribution to the September estimates, with a marginal increase in standard errors for the estimates for this month.

The ABS will review this when October data for this rotation group are available. In the meantime, the ABS encourages users of the GM1 data cube to exercise caution in interpreting incoming and outgoing rotation group changes for Queensland, and, to a lesser extent, Australia.

There has been critical comment on the jobs data from a number of economists, including what this may mean for the Queensland data: Economists have taken aim at the reliability of Australia’s jobs data. May be interesting to see if and how that plays out across the regions next week also.

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