To update the previous post the weird SA3 payrolls data has been resolved. This was the initial data for Cairns posted by ABS:

This is the corrected data:

Which look far more reasonable and consistent with previous releases. I don’t have anything but admiration for the work of ABS over the past year with unreasonably limited resources but am disappointed with the way this was responded to.

I still don’t actually have a formal response but only a twitter reply that issues with Table 5 had been corrected on the day. No they were not because I downloaded the still incorrect data the subsequent day. It raises questions about quality control because anyone could obviously see a problem with the incorrect data which was repeated across all SA3 areas in Australia, then not removed or updated for almost a day.

Still awaiting a reply on more complex issues around the composition of the SA4 data.

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