Labour Market Statistics: December 2017 quarter

#Period-specific information ##Response Rates Survey Reference period Response rate Achieved Sample rate HLFS Each week during the quarter (8 Oct 2017 – 6 Jan 2018) Target: 90 percent Achieved: 80.1 percent Target: 76 percent Achieved: 72.1 percent QES The pay week ending on, or before, 21 November 2017 Target: 89 percent Achieved: 87.2 percent N/A LCI Pay rates at 15 November 2017 Target: 94 percent Achieved: 96.0 percent N/A See New quality measures for the Household Labour Force Survey for more information on the sample rate and response rates. ##HLFS ###Seasonal adjustment for underemployed actively seeking Stats NZ regularly reviews the methodology of its measures. In the December 2017 quarter, it was found the number of people underemployed and actively seeking more hours exhibited a seasonal pattern, beginning in the March 2013 quarter. Stats NZ has made the decision to begin seasonally adjusting this series from the March 2013 quarter as part of the underemployed and underutilisation series. The first quarter that the seasonal adjustment is applied to may change in the future as more data becomes available. Affected seasonally adjusted series – Underemployed, by sex; Total underutilised, by sex; Underutilisation rate, by sex – have been updated and are available on Infoshare. The unadjusted series are unaffected. ###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. The table below shows any partial (P) and zero (Z) outliers for the last year of each time series Outliers Quarters Male employed Female employed Male unemployed Female unemployed Male not in the labour force Female not in the labour force Mar 2017 P Jun 2017 Z P Z P P Sep 2017 Dec 2017 ###HLFS pre- and post-calibration weight The following figure shows that while the distribution of the pre- and post-calibration weights differs within a quarter, the difference between the weights typically does not change from quarter to quarter. The undercoverage rate indicates how representative the pre-calibrated sample is. The higher the undercoverage rate, the less representative the pre-calibrated sample. Usually the undercoverage rate in the HLFS is around 20 percent. The overall undercoverage rate for the HLFS in the December 2017 quarter was 18.9 percent. This compares with 18.8 percent in the September 2017 quarter and 17.6 percent in the December 2016 quarter. ###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. The September 2017 quarter unemployment rate remained at 4.6 percent after we applied seasonal adjustment. This table lists the changes in estimates between the current and previous quarters for the seasonally adjusted data. Table: Percent revision from last estimate, seasonally adjusted :-----------------------: :-------------------------: :---------------: :--------------------: :---------------: :--------------------: :---------------: Dec 2016 0.11 0.06 -0.68 0.23 -0.02 -0.07 Mar 2017 -0.13 0.00 0.85 0.41 -0.01 0.01 Jun 2017 0.02 -0.03 0.46 -0.68 0.00 -0.01 Sep 2017 -0.01 -0.04 -0.71 -0.05 0.05 0.08 This table presents revisions for the trend estimates. Trend revisions are generally larger than those of the seasonally adjusted data. Table: Percent revision from last estimate, trend :-----------------------: :-------------------------: :---------------: :--------------------: :---------------: :--------------------: :---------------: Dec 2016 0.22 0.01 -2.47 0.08 0.02 0.01 Mar 2017 0.43 0.02 -7.20 1.57 -0.08 -0.01 Jun 2017 0.31 -0.02 -7.37 2.53 -0.11 0.06 Sep 2017 -0.10 -0.16 -2.20 1.47 0.04 0.28 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. Seasonally adjusted Trend 1-step 4-step 1-step 4-step Male employed 0.05 0.08 0.17 0.17 Female employed 0.06 0.11 0.24 0.24 Male unemployed 0.46 0.75 1.78 1.79 Female unemployed 0.52 0.86 1.93 1.96 Male not in labour force 0.10 0.17 0.38 0.38 Female not in labour force 0.09 0.14 0.37 0.37 ##LCI and QES The Government will increase the minimum wage by 75 cents to $16.50 per hour on 1 April 2018. We expect to see these changes reflected in the June 2018 quarter. See Minimum wage increase to $16.50 per hour for more information on the minimum wage increase. ##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