Local Employment

Last Updated:

2006

Update Frequency:

Census every 5 years

Indicator Rationale

Local employment is integral to a sustainable society. Local employment contributes to making the municipality a desirable place to live and reduces economic leakage. People who live and work in an area are more likely to shop locally and become embedded in the local community, contributing to community building (ABS, 2001; Austin et al., 2001). Local employment also has environmental benefits, as decreased travel demands reduce greenhouse gas emissions and helps workers attain better work-life balance.

Data Source

Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2006 Census data available on request.

Measure

People Working and Living in the Same LGA: expressed as a proportion of employed people living in the area.

In the 2006 Census, information sufficient to determine whether they worked and lived in the same LGA was not obtained from 9.8% of employed Victorians (varying between 6.4% and 13.7% in individual LGAs). These people - who either: had no fixed place of work, and did not usually travel to a depot to start work; or did not provide a workplace address which could be coded to a Statistical Local Area (either insufficient information or no address at all) - have been excluded from the population prior to the calculation of proportions. In addition, some people did not provide a response enabling the determination of labour force status, and have also been excluded.

Data for this measure have also been provided for various subgroups of the working population based on age, sex and skill level. Further information on skill level can be found on the Highly Skilled Workforce metadata page.

Census Questions

The data have been derived from the following census variables: Place of Work; Place of Usual Residence and Labour Force Status.

These variables were derived from responses to a number of questions on the 2006 Census form:

Question 8: Where does the person usually live?

Question 34: Last week, did the person have a full-time or part-time job of any kind?

Question 35: In the main job held last week, was the person working for an employer or working in own business?

Question 38: In the main job held last week, what was the person's occupation?

Question 39: What are the main tasks that the person usually performs in the occupation reported at Question 38?

Question 41: For the main job held last week, what was the person's workplace address?

Question 44: Last week, how many hours did the person work in all jobs?

Question 46: Did the person actively look for work at any time in the last four weeks?

Question 47: If the person had found a job, could the person have started work last week?

The census form instructed respondents that a job was any type of work, including casual, temporary or part-time work, if it was for one hour or more.

It is important to understand that most census data relates to employment in the week prior to Census night, which is different to the basis on which place of usual residence is determined (i.e. the address at which the person has lived or intends to live for a total of six months or more in 2006). For a small proportion of records, information may appear to be inconsistent when comparing place of work with place of usual residence.

References

Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) (2001). Measuring Well-being: Frameworks for Australian Social Statistics

Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) (2002). Discussion Paper: Measuring a Knowledge-based Economy and Society - An Australian Framework.

Austin, T., Shoemark, S., Stokes, S., Stone, S., and Terril, A. (2001). Part 1-Developing A Draft Set of Sustainability Indicators for the Shire of Cardinia. Graduate School of Environmental Science, Monash University November 2001.