Fair Work Commission

Introduction

The AWRS has collected information from both employers and employees.

This section of the technical notes provides information about the key characteristics of the AWRS samples.

It should be noted that the AWRS is intended to be a resource for producing population estimates in relation to workplace relations matters, and it will enable robust analysis of employment and workplace relations matters that are not canvassed by other national surveys.

The information about enterprises and employees that is available through the AWRS dataset has been collected for the purpose of giving context to the workplace relations practices reported by enterprises and the experiences of employees.

The AWRS, however, should not be a substitute for ABS catalogues that provide more robust estimates of the characteristics of employer and employee populations in Australia, primarily due to the significantly larger sample sizes and higher response rates that ABS estimates are based on.

The data collected through the AWRS surveys has been weighted up to population estimates sourced from ABS catalogues.

Enterprises

The table below provides population counts presented as the weighted and unweighted estimates from the employer surveys. The table demonstrates the approximate number of employers and employees the AWRS data represents.

The population estimates generated from the AWRS are broadly comparable to information about the employer population available from the ABS Counts of Australian Businesses catalogue (8165.0) .

The estimates for the employee population that have been derived from information supplied by enterprises broadly compare to estimates from the ABS Labour Force survey catalogue (6291.0) .

Source: AWRS 2014, Enterprise Characteristics (Recruitment screener) survey.

* AWRS estimates for multi-site location results reflect the state/territory where the greatest number of worksites are located and whether the largest share of employment is located in either metropolitan or regional areas. ABS catalogue 8155.0 measures generally reflect location of head office.

Employees

The table below provides the proportion of the AWRS sample that reported each characteristic.

The estimates have been weighted.

The estimates for the employee population broadly compare to estimates from the ABS Labour Force survey catalogue (6291.0) , although notable differences in the AWRS employee sample characteristics and the ABS Labour Force survey exist. For example, the AWRS includes more employees in typical 'white collar' occupations, including a higher proportion of Managers, and Clerical and Administrative Workers, and fewer 'blue collar' occupations such as Technicians and Trades Workers, and Labourers. These differences may be due to 'blue collar' workers having limited access to centralised work email systems to be able to complete the survey online.

The occupational differences between the AWRS sample and ABS estimates may explain the lower proportion of union membership in the AWRS sample compared to the latest ABS Employee Earnings, Benefits and Trade Union Membership (EEBTUM) estimates from August 2013.

Other surveys of employees typically focus on an employee's main job, defined as the job for which they work the greatest number of hours or earn the greatest income; however, because the AWRS is a linked study, employee data relates to the employer that the employee received the survey from, which may or may not have been their main job.

Of the 9% of employees who reported having more than 1 job at the time they completed the survey, 98% had completed the survey about their main job, for which they work the most paid hours per week. The AWRS collected information about the industry of the employee’s main job and the employee’s occupation for these cases to provide some context about how their main job relates to the employment that they have provided information about in the survey.

Source: AWRS 2014, Employee survey and Enterprise Characteristics (Recruitment screener) survey.

* Other includes employees who did not provide a response, indicated that their employment status was other, undefined or did not know.

The AWRS has collected a range of demographic information about employees that can enable analysis of sub-groups of the population for a range of employment issues.

A selection of these demographics is presented in the table below.

It is important to note that AWRS, data should not be a substitute for ABS catalogues that provide more robust estimates of the characteristics of the employee populations in Australia. This is primarily due to the significantly larger sample sizes and higher response rates that ABS estimates are based on.

Source: AWRS 2014, Employee survey and Enterprise Characteristics (Recruitment screener) survey.

*Will not add up to 100% as respondents were able to select more than one option if they had multiple dependent children aged 15 years or less currently living at home with them.

^ The AWRS was administered in English only, so participation relied on an employee's ability to read English.