Interactive exploration of Labour Force Statistics from the ABS

With reports of 600,000 Australians losing their employment from March to April and the release of new dataset showcasing this from the ABS (6202.0 — https://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Lookup/6202.0Main+Features1Apr%202020?OpenDocument), I thought it would be good to explore this interactively with Power BI.

I built an app that allows users to select from a number of measures such as Total Employed, Employed Full-time, Employed Part-Time, filter by sex or view all persons and view this over the time period of data available (February 1978 to April 2020). I also have added an ability to filter by state though I’ve only included the 5 most populous states in Australia.

You can access the app here: LINK

The first page allows you to create a single chart from the filters you choose.

Alternatively, you can look at the small multiples version which showcases the 5 states in the data along with Australia overall. In this page you just need to choose a single measure and whether you want to view for all persons or just males or females. In doing so you can view the nuances between the states.

In the example below we can see total unemployed from 2008 to 2020 for all persons.

We can see here that the unemployment rate was already trending up prior to the Covid-19 pandemic forcing us to shut-down and put a hold on economic activity.

Also, here’s the unemployment rate split by state over the entirety of the time period covered by this ABS dataset.

What is apparent is that whilst we see quick rises in the unemployment rate when shocks to the system occur, the fall back to lower (and healthier) levels takes time.

The scale of these small multiples charts is not anchored to be the same so do mind that when you look at these. There is a good argument to do that for data like this but I’ve refrained for now. However, if some measures have states as large outliers versus others due to sheer economic size then anchoring to a specific axis size can make the trends in smaller states appear flat and unable to be seen easily. This is something to consider but for now I leave you with the forewarning on this.

Also, as with other Power BI apps, you can hover over a chart and click on the expand button to view it in more detail.

There are a lot of other things you can do with just this data such as viewing how these measures ranks across time, sex and states but I have a few other things to work on so will leave it at this for now. Feel free to explore the Excel datasets that the ABS provides yourself if you like. Or reach out if you have a project and you want some help.

Have a great weekend.

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