Labour Market Statistics: September 2021 quarter

Period-specific information Response Rates Survey Reference period Response rate Sample rate HLFS Each week during the quarter (1 July 2021 – 30 September 2021) Target: 90 percent Achieved: 75.8 percent Target: 76 percent Achieved: 71.8 percent QES The pay week ending on, or before, 20 August 2021 Target: 90 percent Achieved: 90.5 percent N/A LCI Pay rates at 15 August 2021 Target: 94 percent Achieved: 92.0 percent N/A See Household Labour Force Survey sources and methods: 2016 for more information on the sample rate and response rates. HLFS Coverage rates Usually the undercoverage rate in the HLFS is around 20 percent. The overall undercoverage rate for the HLFS in the September 2021 quarter was 17.1 percent. This compares with 20.9 in the June 2021 quarter and 19.7 percent in the September 2020 quarter. Impact of COVID-19 on collection operations Face-to-face interviewing was halted when New Zealand went to Alert Level 4 on Tuesday 17th August 2021. Interviewers were able to work from home so there were no days of missed phone interviewing. Households that are in the HLFS for their first quarter are usually visited by a field interviewer, but given the shift to higher alert levels, this was unable to happen from August 17th onwards. Instead, letters were sent to first-time households asking them to call Stats NZ. - this is the same approach that was used during the June 2020 quarter when field staff were unable to visit new households due to the nation-wide lockdown. New Zealand (excluding Auckland) moved to alert level 2 on 7 September 2021. Despite most of New Zealand being at alert level 2 by the end of the quarter, survey interviewing in the field had not resumed by 30 September 2021. This is due to the more infectious nature of the delta variant of Covid-19 and related concerns for the health and safety of our field interviewers and survey respondents. See COVID-19 and labour market statistics in the September 2021 quarter for more information on how collection of the September 2021 quarter was affected by the Covid-19 related lockdown. Additive outlier treatment X13 is the tool used by Stats NZ to perform seasonal adjustment. If a value is sufficiently extreme due to a short-term break in the raw data, X13 may not fully account for the outlier. Tests and analysis significantly indicate that the series listed below were impacted by the unusual events experienced this quarter related to Covid-19 and the lockdown: Male and female employed Male and female unemployed Male and female not in the labour force (NILF) Employed, aged 15-64 years Unemployed, aged 15-64 years Not in the labour force, aged 15-64 years Total actual hours worked Like the June and September 2020 quarters, the September 2021 quarter has been treated as an additive outlier for these series. The outlier treatment effectively removes the September quarter from seasonal factor calculations and prevents the September quarter from causing undesirable revisions to current and historical seasonal factors. Trend values for the September 2021 quarter for the above series are not being published. Trend series are slow to react to change, so the calculated trend value is not accurate this quarter. New Sample Following every census, we review the HLFS sample design. The updated sample design will be implemented over eight quarters (two years), starting in the December 2020 quarter. For the September 2021 quarter, half of the households are from the new sample. Outliers During the seasonal adjustment process, X-13-ARIMA-SEATS can give less weight to the irregular component. Specifically, if the estimated irregular component at a point in time is sufficiently large compared with the standard deviation of the irregular component as a whole, then the irregular component at that point can be downweighted or removed completely and re-estimated. We refer to such observations as partial- and zero-outliers, respectively. In practice, the downweighting of outliers does little to seasonally adjusted data, but the impact of the outliers on the trend series will generally be reduced. However, if an outlier ceases to be an outlier as more data becomes available, then significant revisions to the trend series become possible. After applying additive outliers to the above series for the September 2021 quarter, there were no additional outliers in our main series in the last year. Revisions to HLFS Each quarter, we apply the seasonal adjustment process to the latest quarter and all previous quarters. Every estimate is subject to revision each quarter as new data is added, which means that seasonally adjusted estimates for previous quarters may change slightly. In practice, estimates more than two years from the end-point will change little. This table lists the changes in estimates between the current and previous quarters for the seasonally adjusted data. Percent revision from last estimate, seasonally adjusted Quarter Male employed Female employed Male unemployed Female unemployed Male not in labour force Female not in labour force Sep 2020 -0.01 -0.01 0.28 -0.06 -0.03 0.03 Dec 2020 0.00 -0.01 -0.02 0.11 0.01 0.00 Mar 2021 0.00 -0.01 -0.05 0.23 0.02 0.00 Jun 2021 0.01 0.03 -0.27 -0.36 0.00 -0.03 This table presents revisions for the trend estimates. Trend revisions are generally larger than those of the seasonally adjusted data. Percent revision from last estimate, trend Quarter Male employed Female employed Male unemployed Female unemployed Male not in labour force Female not in labour force Sep 2020 0.00 0.00 0.12 -0.09 -0.01 0.01 Dec 2020 0.00 -0.01 0.09 0.15 0.00 0.01 Mar 2021 0.00 0.01 -0.15 0.08 0.02 -0.02 Jun 2021 0.00 0.01 -0.05 -0.16 -0.01 0.00 The table below shows the average of all such absolute revisions, expressed relatively, and indicates to what extent the current estimates might be revised when the revised data for the next quarter becomes available. Mean absolute percent revisions Seasonally adjusted Trend 1-step 4-step 1-step 4-step Male employed 0.05 0.09 0.20 0.21 Female employed 0.06 0.10 0.25 0.27 Male unemployed 0.55 0.86 2.08 2.15 Female unemployed 0.54 0.96 2.16 2.32 Male not in labour force 0.10 0.17 0.40 0.41 Female not in labour force 0.10 0.15 0.40 0.43 QES Response rate The response rate for the Quarterly Employment Survey in the September 2021 quarter was 90.5 percent. Understanding inter-quarter variability in the Quarterly Employment Survey Stratified sample design divides a population into smaller mutually exclusive groups, called strata. Random samples are drawn within these strata. The goal of stratification is to group similar units, by industry and employment count for QES. Reducing variability in output variables between units within each stratum allows a more efficient and representative selection of units to be surveyed over the population. Different strata have different probabilities of selection and sample weights, according to the expected level of variability and contribution to the population’s outputs. For example, the very largest businesses may have a 100% chance of selection and carry a weight of 1, so that they represent only themselves. Meanwhile, very small businesses have a low chance of selection, and those sampled carry a large weight to represent many units. Each quarter, units in QES are allocated to strata based on ANZSIC division and specific cut-offs in employment count. A sample is drawn according to the probabilities of selection in each stratum. Typically, a similar group of businesses is sampled each quarter since selection at the strata level is based on a fixed span of permanent random numbers, to which each business is assigned. Similarity of the sample between quarters promotes accuracy in inter-quarter movements. Conversely, sample changes due to business births, deaths and movements between strata reduce accuracy in inter-quarter movements. Prior to March 2021, the old sample design maintained a constant strata allocation but still experienced some changes in the sample due to business births and deaths. The new sample design reallocates strata each quarter to maintain an efficient and representative sample. The downside of regular reallocation is larger variability in inter-quarter movements than previously experienced, especially at the industry level. Data based on full-coverage administrative sources may be more suitable than sample data such as QES for studying inter-quarter movements at lower levels. Please refer to the Monthly Employment Indicator (MEI) or Business Employment Data (BED) series for more information. LCI The LCI measures changes in salary and wage rates for a fixed quantity and quality of labour. LCI data is collected by postal and electronic surveys. For the September 2021 quarter, respondents were asked to report pay rates on the reference date of August 15th 2021. The response rate was 92 percent, finishing below the target response rate of 94 percent. The response rate for key firms was 100 percent, meeting the target of 100 percent. General information and methodology For general information and methodology on the specific surveys within the labour market statistics release, please see the following Datainfo+ pages: Household Labour Force Survey Labour Cost Index Quarterly Employment Survey en-NZ