Measuring unpaid care in the Labour Account consultation

The Australia Bureau of Statistics undertook a consultation process from December 2024 to February 2025 canvassing views on early experimental estimates of the total hours spent on unpaid care, and their monetary value. These new measures will improve the visibility of the contribution of unpaid care to society.

The ABS intends to publish unpaid care estimates on an annual basis in the future. In addition, sex and age demographic breakdowns will be included in the existing Labour Account estimates to facilitate a meaningful point of comparison with some paid work equivalents (timing for the release of the aforementioned components to be determined).

The consultation process sought stakeholder views on the following aspects of the measurement of unpaid care:

• The definition of care work,
• Valuation methods for unpaid care and the ABS’ preferred approach,
• Market replacements for unpaid care activities,
• Presenting unpaid care estimates in context,
• Additivity across various unpaid care estimates,
• Utility of age groupings presented, and
• Unpaid adult care measurement.

A large number of responses were received during the consultation period, from both individuals and organisations. The consultation highlighted the importance of recognising the contribution of unpaid carers and supported the ABS for moving towards measuring this activity on a regular basis.

Main themes emerging from the consultation responses included:

• The vast majority (84%) of responses indicated broad support for the ABS definition of care work.
• The vast majority (88%) of responses indicated it would be useful for the ABS to publish a range of estimates using different methodologies.
• The majority (72%) of responses indicated it would be useful to present estimates using the median wage rate for context.
• The majority (60%) of responses indicated publishing sex and age totals separately without forced alignment would be most useful.
• Most responses (38%) indicated no preference for whether age groupings are presented consistently with paid work age groups.

Since the consultation period, further work has been undertaken to build on the initial estimates of unpaid childcare published in November 2024. This work has focussed on populating estimates of unpaid adult care and producing a full time series of both unpaid childcare and unpaid adult care. These additional steps will be described in an upcoming information paper in late June 2025; a series of data download spreadsheets will also be made available as part of this release.

In compiling these estimates, the ABS has incorporated key aspects of feedback received through the consultation process, this includes:

• publishing a range of measures for various replacement cost options,
• maintaining separate totals for sex and age without forcing alignment,
• presenting age groups which are the most accurate and useful for unpaid care, including separating the 55 years and older age group to 55 to 64 years and 65 years and over, and
• presenting a median wage rate to provide context to the estimates.

The consultation process also highlighted some aspects of unpaid care which were beyond the scope of these first set of experimental estimates. The ABS will continue to investigate and consider these suggestions and will look to incorporate aspects which can be measured in future iterations where possible, given input data source constraints and limitations.

Examples for potential future work include:

• Separately identifying and valuing care for children with a disability.
• Accounting for varying “intensity” of unpaid care provided, for example through accounting for the number of unpaid carers present in a single household.
• What would unpaid care be valued at if a carers payment or equivalent were applied instead of a replacement cost wage rate?
• Separately identifying short term care provided to adults, which is conceptually outside the scope of our care framework, however, may be captured in Time Use Survey estimates.
• Expanding our definition of care to incorporate additional elements where possible.
• Modelling additional financial aspects or costs to the unpaid carer, for example lost superannuation or leave entitlements.

The ABS would like to thank all those who provided responses through the consultation process and the important role this played in shaping the development of unpaid care estimates. For any further comment or information, please contact the ABS by emailing unpaid.care.consultation@abs.gov.au