Embargoed 11:30am (AEDT)
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has published the first quarterly iteration of the Australian Labour Account, which includes all jobs across industries, including secondary jobs.
"The Australian Labour Account provides the most complete picture of the labour market, and a measure of the total number of jobs worked. This means we can gauge the total hours worked and income across multiple jobs - not just people’s main job," said Bruce Hockman, Chief Economist at the ABS.
The Australian Labour Account provides information across the 19 industry divisions, available for each quarter from September 2010 to September 2017.
"These new estimates show that, through the year to September 2017, the professional, scientific and technical services industry increased by over 13 per cent, the fastest of any industry in the economy," Mr Hockman said.
This industry, which includes (but is not limited to) architecture, engineering, computer systems design, law and accountancy, now has over 1.1 million jobs, representing 8.6 per cent of all filled jobs. It is now the fourth largest industry in the economy, behind the health care and social assistance, retail trade and accommodation and food services industries.
"The Australian Labour Account showed that over 70,000 of these jobs in the professional, scientific and technical services industry were secondary jobs, where the person had another main job," Mr Hockman said.
The number of hours worked in professional, scientific and technical services increased by 11.8 per cent to 481.2 million hours through the year to September 2017. Total labour income in the industry increased by 16.0 per cent to $26.6 billion over the same period.
The quarterly Australian Labour Account provides a framework through which to use existing labour market data from diverse sources. It is also an important new source of industry information that is expected to lead to improvements in the measurement of productivity in Australia.
