The reliability of Indigenous employment estimates

Abstract

Since 1971, the main vehicle for establishing a measure of the labour force status of Indigenous Australians has been the five-yearly Census. For the total population, census data are complemented by inter-censal estimates of labour force status derived from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Labour Force Survey (LFS) first instituted in 1964. This long-standing commitment to data gathering reflects the importance of employment, unemployment, and labour force participation rates as key national indicators of social and economic wellbeing.