Today’s release of data from the 2016 Census allows us to identify some of Australians’ more common characteristics, how they vary across states and territories, and how they are changing over time.
Western Australian Labor leader Mark McGowan on the campaign trail.
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In the lead up to the state election, Western Australian Labor leader Mark McGowan said WA has the highest unemployment rate in Australia. Is that correct?
Stories can have a profound effect on our behaviour.
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History shows us that narratives play an important role in market behaviour. But new research shows that all it takes is a simple story that matches our preconceived notions.
We need to account for the benefit we get from nature.
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When we don’t factor in the environment in our economic decision making, we aren’t getting an acurate picture of what’s happening. Australia needs to adopt more environmental economics.
Labour force surveys and the Census just aren’t getting it right when it comes to the crucial task of measuring employment.
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Shadow minister for employment Brendan O'Connor said the labour force participation rate was in “free fall” and that this showed “people have stopped looking for work”. Is that true?
Labor’s Chris Bowen says Australian workers are doing it tough.
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The evidence the Census servers suffered a DDoS attack is weak. A simpler explanation is that they buckled under load of Australians filling out their Census forms as asked.
If you only consider average depth, you could drown at the deepest point.
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Despite assuring Australians its systems were load tested and secure, the Census site went offline at a crucial time. Could the ABS have avoided such an embarrasing failure?
The ABS has announced that it will retain the names and addresses collected in the 2016 Census.
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By linking censuses through time or by combining other information with the census, many more important policy questions can be answered than if we used one dataset alone.
Employment growth does not equal ‘jobs creation’.
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Politicians all too often use monthly jobs numbers to infer that the other mob is doing a bad job or that they are doing a great job at managing the economy. But that’s a flawed use of the data.
A 4.4% drop in business investment activity has caused alarm.
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Business investment fell by 4.4%, with non-mining sectors slow to take up the slack left by resources.
Census collectors go door to door in Sydney in 2011, the 100th year of census taking in Australia. Now the next census, due in 2016, is in doubt.
AAP/Dean Lewins
Before Australia proceeds with plans to devote fewer resources to a less frequent national census, we should consider the Canadian experience of what losing such rich data means.
How can we assess whether or not Australian cultural policies work if we don’t have the data to measure participation?
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If reports are to be believed, both the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) and the federal government are strongly considering moving from a five-year to a ten-year census cycle. This move has been…
Queensland’s debt: is it sky high, or under control? An economist shows what you need to know to judge for yourself.
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How much debt is Queensland really in? How much of that debt can past Labor governments bear responsibility for, and has the current Liberal National government cut or added to it? And how does Queensland’s…
If we want to know whether screening saves lives, we need to show a reduction in the cancer death rate rather than an increase in the survival rate.
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Cancer screening is beneficial when it’s able to prevent people dying from cancer. And it should clearly be adopted where there’s evidence showing this. But using cancer survival rates to promote screening…
Finding a job can be hard work – luckily, knowing which unemployment figures to pay attention to is much easier.
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Queensland unemployment recently plummeted – or did it? Whether you’re a Queenslander getting ready to vote in the January 31 state election, or simply someone interested in employment trends in Australia…