Want to know what industries have been hit the most by Covid-19? It’s in the ABS data
Update — 16 June 2002: the data in the app is now up to 30 May 2020 as the ABS released new data yesterday. It had been some weeks since a new release was made available but thankfully it is with great work by the team at the ABS in conjunction with the ATO.
With news of the famous Carriageworks in Sydney going into voluntary administration (LINK), it puts a spotlight on the impact that Covid-19 is having on the economy.
Last month I built an app that takes the “Weekly Payroll Jobs and Wages in Australia” from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). This is data that they updated again yesterday but as the data is provided in tables it is not as easily explored. As such, I built an app that makes it more interactive. We can use this app to explore how the impact is unfolding on various industries.
Impact on Employee Wages
So, how do we see which sector is impacted the most in terms of Wages? Firstly, when you get to the app you need to go to the Employee Wage Index section.
Then, on the timescale chart (bottom right) click on the right most bar (which represents the latest week of data).
Then in the top left bar chart you can see which industries jobs have had the highest and lowest index figures. As a reminder, these figures represent the change in wages since the 14th March which is shown in orange in the historic time series bar chart as that’s the date when Australia hit its 100th Covid-19 case. You can see more of an explanation in the ABS explanatory notes for this dataset here (LINK).
Back to the Industry ranks and scrolling to the bottom we see that Accommodation jobs have fared the worst, 2nd worst is Rental, Hiring and Real-Estate services and 3rd worst is Arts & Recreation services.
To specifically see how the Arts industry was affected over time we simply click on the arts and recreation bar to see how the time series chart (bottom right) changes.
You can see that the dip was felt over the next 3 weeks after the 14th March but then has had some slight improvement. You could look at this on a state by state basis too or by Sex.
The worst on this list was Accommodation services and we can see how their timeline looks.
Impact on Jobs
The ABC News ran a story last night showcasing the loss of jobs for the Accommodation sector being 33% since March 14 and for Arts and Recreating services it was 27%.
We can see this in the data too if we go back to the first menu showcasing jobs data.
Here is Arts and Recreation
And Accommodation
It’s certainly not a good time out there for many in these and related industries so spare a thought for those affected.
App
You can access the app used to look at this data here: LINK
Get in touch
For more information about this app or other things data analytics related, feel free to get in touch with me below.
Mark Monfort (Head of Data Analytics and Technology, Prosperity Advisers)
- Phone: 02 8262 8700
- Email: mmonfort@prosperity.com.au
