Greater insight into regional workforce to form future policy

Access to regular and accurate data surrounding regional labour markets is highly sought after by federal, state, territory and local governments, as well as academics, program providers and business owners.

The new regional labour force data model will build on existing Labour Force Survey data, by drawing in extra sources to provide more insight into regional labour markets.

According to ABS head of labour statistics Bjorn Jarvis, previous survey data provided a solid picture of how SA's regional communities were fairing for employment and unemployment but it had variability.

"In the past, regional labour market statistics relied exclusively on people responding to the Labour Force Survey. It has a very large sample, the survey is not designed for reporting for regional labour markets," he said.

"This was mostly caused by chunking up a large survey into about 90 regions across Australia and providing a small amount on each community."

To improve this, the ABS has gained access to administrative data to bolster the new model.

A combination of survey data and modern, statistical methods, will bring in information from the Australian Taxation Office and Centrelink to provide a month-to-month dataset from each regional area and specific communities.

"The numbers do not bounce around as much as they did with just access to survey data," Mr Jarvis said.

"For anyone trying to understand labour markets and how communities are fairing, the new model provides a definite sense of how communities are tracking and if certain communities need more support than others."

From a social perspective, it is important for policymakers in particular, understand how many regional people are in work, who has access to income and how many are looking for work.

"It is an interest to all levels of government. The Commonwealth government and the SA government pay a lot of attention to regional labour market information, to see how regions compare to each other and how this has changed over time," Mr Jarvis said.

"There is a lot of interest at present in SA's strong labour market compared to what it had prior to the pandemic."

Regular access to information about the performance of regional labour markets ensures accurate data is used to inform future policies and community programs.

"Having better data means evidence-based policy will be better," Mr Jarvis said.

"It is better for those accessing support and taxpayers can see money going to where it will actually make a difference."

Mr Jarvis believed this was a critical element to help deliver improved policy design and program delivery, as well as gain a sense of how these are performing across time.

"More data will produce targeted and effective policy," he said.

"There are limited regular pictures of how these communities look across a longer period of time."

The release of timely, up-to-date data relating to regional Australia was supported by Regional Australia Institute.

RAI chief executive officer Liz Ritchie believed detailed labour force market information could help build a stronger Australian workforce.

"In developing the RAI's Regionalisation Ambition, a 10-year 20-goal framework for regional Australia, people living, working, and supporting the regions reported a desire for a long-term plan to contribute and collectively build a stronger Australia. This cannot be done without data - which provides the evidence needed to affect positive change for regional communities," she said.

"Regional Australia is not homogenous, which is why data is so important. It can help show how varied our nation's regional communities are, proving the need for placed-based policy and programs."

When regional workforce initiatives and programs are "one-size-fits-all", Ms Ritchie believed it reduced efficacy.

She also believed a regional renaissance was underway in Australia, with city dwellers moving to the regions in high numbers, helping to create a new thirst for knowledge and information relating to the regions.

"As the regions continue to mature and grow, timely, localised data relating to labour force markets will prove to be an invaluable resource," Ms Ritchie said.

"The data will play a key role in the development of short, medium and long-term strategies to support regional communities, and when the regions thrive so too does the nation as a whole."

Workskil Australia chief executive officer Nicole Dwyer said the new data was significantly more reliable and up-to-date, as it was relying on Centrelink data and Single Touch payroll to look at unemployment rates, rather than relying on a sample of people responding to a survey.

"We welcome this new approach to regional data collection and believe it is a more responsive data set to communicate what is happening in regional areas," Ms Dwyer said.

"Workskil Australia operates in across regional areas, including Geraldton, Port Augusta and Port Lincoln. This helps us to gain better insight into underemployment, job insecurity and general unemployment, so we can design better programs.

"We would welcome the data geographies to be reduced even further as some are really large, particularly in WA and SA, to help even further."