Labour Market Statistics: September 2019 quarter

#Period-specific information ##Response Rates Survey Reference period Response rate Sample rate HLFS Each week during the quarter (1 July 2019 – 30 September 2019) Target: 90 percent Achieved: 85.7 percent Target: 76 percent Achieved: 77.6 percent QES The pay week ending on, or before, 20 August 2019 Target: 89 percent Achieved: 87.2 percent N/A LCI Pay rates at 15 August 2019 Target: 94 percent Achieved: 94.7 percent N/A See New quality measures for the Household Labour Force Survey for more information on the sample rate and response rates. ##HLFS ###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. Outliers Quarters Male employed Female employed Male unemployed Female unemployed Male not in the labour force Female not in the labour force Dec 2018 Z Mar 2019 Jun 2019 Sep 2019 ###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 September 2019 quarter was 17.7 percent. This compares with 18.9 in the June 2019 quarter and 17.6 percent in the September 2018 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 June 2019 quarter unemployment rate was unchanged at 3.9 percent after we applied seasonal adjustment. 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 Jun 2018 -0.10 -0.02 -0.48 0.17 0.16 0.15 Sep 2018 0.01 0.03 -0.11 -0.09 0.01 -0.05 Dec 2018 0.05 0.06 -0.27 -0.48 -0.06 -0.07 Mar 2019 0.04 -0.06 0.98 0.37 -0.13 -0.04 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 Jun 2018 -0.05 -0.03 -0.01 0.26 0.00 0.07 Sep 2018 -0.01 0.03 -0.39 -0.21 -0.08 0.00 Dec 2018 0.01 0.02 -0.29 -0.42 0.04 0.00 Mar 2019 0.13 -0.09 4.38 1.33 -0.62 -0.1 Mean absolute percent revisions Seasonally adjusted Trend 1-step 4-step 1-step 4-step Male employed 0.05 0.09 0.17 0.18 Female employed 0.06 0.11 0.24 0.24 Male unemployed 0.48 0.77 1.84 1.83 Female unemployed 0.53 0.88 1.95 2.03 Male not in labour force 0.10 0.17 0.39 0.38 Female not in labour force 0.09 0.14 0.36 0.39 ##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