The employment module will include a range of questions for both persons in employment, as well as those not working. Principle Economic Status, collected in the demographic module, will be used to filter individuals into the relevant employment questions.
For persons in employment, they will be asked about their employment status to capture self-employment, their hours worked and whether they would like to work more or less hours, general job satisfaction, and barriers within their employment.
For persons outside of the labour market, they will be asked if they worked previously, the reason for leaving and when they left. Respondents will also be asked if the situation was right would they like to work, what barriers are preventing them from working and if they would like full- or part-time employment.
There was an interest to collect information on future goals. This may relate to promotion, retirement or for those outside the labour market, getting a job. This concept will be considered in the design phase. There was also an interest to collect information on transition points for younger people and barriers preventing them transitioning from school into employment.
Additional data will be linked to the employment module for respondents in employment, including income, detail on industry and occupation, and whether the respondent works in the public or private sector.
There were requests for us to collect more information on topics which largely duplicated included topics. For example, there was interest in collecting information on enabling factors within work, and benefits of self-employment. For respondents in employment, there was also suggestions to collect detail on previous promotions, or promotion discrimination, detail on whether the respondent thought their qualification matched their role, and whether the respondent had disclosed their disability to their employer. Ultimately it was decided these topics would be better captured by other research methods.
The stakeholder consultations revealed some interest in learning more about people outside of the labour market. There was interest in capturing detail on why they would like to work, enabling factors that would support people transitioning into employment, whether the respondent had recently applied for roles, and if so, what applications supports they had used. There was interest understanding if a fear of disclosure preventing respondents from applying for roles. There was also some interest in collecting data on alternative activities such as job scheme, rehabilitated training, therapeutic craft, social enterprise, and training. Due to the length of the survey and to ensure respondents aren’t being overly burdened these topics were deprioritised due to ranking lower than topics retained for inclusion.
Detail on work related training will be captured more generally in the education module. There was some interest in examining old age transitions, including the experience transitioning from disability benefits to old age pension. However, it was agreed this would be better explored using qualitative methods. Lastly, information on specific career supports accessed in school was deprioritised due to small subgroup size.