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The Economic PictureA clearer view of Australia.

Australia · Jobs & wages

Make sense
of the numbers.

The definitions matter. These measures answer different questions, cover different groups and arrive at different times.

Not seasonally adjusted (original) means regular seasonal patterns remain in the figures. It does not mean the first or unrevised edition. Seasonally adjusted figures allow for regular seasonal patterns; the label does not mean more up-to-date.

Reading the jobs figures

Employment

Employed people aged 15 and over, including people who worked at least one hour in the reference week and some people temporarily away from work. A person with two jobs is counted once in employment.

Unemployment

People without employment who were actively looking and available to work, with specific ABS rules for people waiting to start a job. The unemployment rate uses the labour force as its denominator, rather than the whole population.

Participation

The labour force – employed plus unemployed people – as a share of the civilian population aged 15 and over. People outside the labour force are not automatically unemployed.

Underemployment

Employed people who want and are available for more work under the ABS definition. Here the rate is a share of the labour force; it is different from the underemployment ratio, which uses employed people.

Full-time and part-time

ABS classifications use the 35-hours threshold and usual/actual hours rules across all jobs. They do not mean permanent and casual employment.

Seasonally adjusted

Regular seasonal patterns are removed to help reveal movements between months. Adjusted estimates can be revised. The selector identifies the published basis. Original, seasonally adjusted and trend series stay separate. Detailed age status is original; some territory series have no seasonally adjusted option.

Reading the pay figures

Wage Price Index

Tracks wage-rate changes for a broadly fixed mix of jobs, excluding bonuses in this selection. It does not measure each person's pay rise, their hours or take-home pay.

Mean and median

The mean is an average. The median is the midpoint of the specified distribution. AWE means, full-time ordinary-time means and Employee Earnings medians have different populations and concepts; subtracting them does not measure a like-for-like pay gap.

Nominal and real

Nominal figures are measured in dollars or wage-rate indexes before adjusting for prices. A real wage-rate index requires compatible wage and price observations and a ratio calculation. The Wages & prices comparison adopts the frozen OD real-WPI processing release, using original WPI and original quarterly CPI. This is a derived wage-rate measure, not individual earnings or take-home pay.

Survey uncertainty and missing values

These are survey estimates. The earnings snapshot retains relative standard errors as source evidence but does not chart them as dollar earnings. The August 2024 female part-time weekly earnings cell remains unavailable; no value is estimated to fill it.

Official sources. Explicit editions.

Australian Bureau of Statistics, CC BY 4.0. Source figures are preserved as published and extracted/reformatted by OD Engine and The Economic Picture. Application charts convert thousands to millions of people or billions of hours, round labels and rebase WPI where stated. This is an independent explanation, not an ABS publication.

The site uses specific source editions and does not refresh automatically. Jobs are September 2026; WPI ends June quarter 2026; AWE is May 2026; Employee Earnings is August 2025. These are explicit source editions, not a claim that every figure is the latest available today.

Reading the richer comparisons

Occupation and industry

Occupation describes someone’s work. Industry describes their employer’s activity. Their medians cover different groups and cannot be pooled. The source occupation classification is retained; older pay groups are not silently joined to newer OSCA job counts.

Percentiles and earnings bands

A published threshold describes a point in the distribution. A broad band does not reveal each person’s rank. Ties prevent exact individual rankings.

Sampling uncertainty

Relative standard error (RSE) describes sampling uncertainty. The source marks 25–50% for caution and above 50% as too unreliable for general use.

Publication changes

Labour Force modernisation changes some tables and classifications. The earnings supplementary survey is changing too. A new publication does not silently refresh these specific source editions.

Additional sources

Labour Force state/age extension: September 2026, Tables 010/011/013/017/X28/X29. Employee Earnings extension: August 2025, Tables 1/2/6 and separately labelled national webpage distributions. Table 7’s ambiguous periods remain excluded. Job Vacancies: August 2026, national total/private/public. ABS aggregates, CC BY 4.0; extracted and reformatted by OD and TEP.

ABS Job Vacancies, August 2026 · Labour Force modernisation

Average monthly hours and full-time shares are TEP calculations from matched groups, months and series bases. Charts have equivalent tables. No unavailable cell is filled for visual completeness.