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Journey to work, 2000 : census 2000 brief

• By Reschovsky, Clara A.
• Creators: Reschovsky, Clara A.
• Corporate Creators: United States. Census Bureau
• Subject/TRT Terms: [+] Choice Of Transportation Communiting Mode Choice Statistics Travel Behavior Travel Patterns Travel Surveys Travel Time Trip Length Work Trips
• Publication/ Report Number: C2KBR-33
• Resource Type: Research Paper
• Corporate Publisher: U.S. Census Bureau
• Abstract: This report, one of a series that presents population and housing data collected during Census 2000, provides information on the place-of-work and journey-to-work characteristics of workers 16 years and over who were employed and at work during the reference week. Data are shown for the United States, regions, states, counties, and metropolitan areas. More ▼ -->
• Format: PDF
• Collection(s): US Transportation Collection
• Main Document Checksum: [+] urn:sha256:a992f61598c39a7d10c105e1fbff3c868b784b77d2fdeb0c88f6baeeba71d790
• Download URL: https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/5885/dot_5885_DS1.pdf

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COVID skewed journey-to -work census data. Here’s how city planners can make the best of it

Associate Professor, Director Australian Urban Observatory, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University

Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University

Professor of Urban Policy and Director, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University

Senior Research Fellow, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University

Disclosure statement

Melanie Davern receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council and funded by RMIT University as a Vice Chancellor's Senior Research Fellow.

Alan Both receives funding from an NHMRC-UKRI (APP1192788) research grant.

RMIT University receives funding from a range of research and industry organisations for projects on which Jago Dodson works.

Tiebei (Terry) Li does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

RMIT University provides funding as a strategic partner of The Conversation AU.

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Australian cities are slowly recovering from the COVID pandemic. Travel across cities is almost back to pre-pandemic levels. Google Mobility show only a 14% drop in travel to work across Victoria and 12% drop across New South Wales compared to pre-COVID results.

However, the disruption of COVID will reverberate through transport planning for years to come. The 2021 census – when people were asked about how they got to work – coincided with COVID lockdowns in our two biggest cities. The distortion of commuting patterns at that time creates problems for anyone who wishes to use these data.

Data on where people work, how they get to work and how far they travel represent a powerful tool for transport planners and policymakers. Transport has a critical influence on the liveability of cities , health , sustainability and quality of life .

So what can we do about these COVID-skewed transport data? In this article we propose some ideas to ensure the census results remain useful for city planning.

Why do the census responses matter?

The Australian Bureau of Statistics runs the census and has collected transport method and workplace data every five years since 1976 . In 2016, it improved these data to include distance travelled to work and commuting method .

In that year, 9.2 million commuters travelled an average distance of 16.5km to work. Of these people, 79% used a private vehicle, 14% took public transport and 5.2% cycled or walked. A further 500,000 people worked at home and 1 million employed persons did not go to work on census day.

The level of detail the census provides isn’t available with other methods. This is why the journey-to-work questions are so important.

But many of us were in lockdown in 2021

On census night, Australia’s two biggest cities, Melbourne and Sydney, were in lockdown , as were large regional cities across Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland (and the lockdown in Brisbane had ended only two days before ). People were asked : “How did the person get to work on Tuesday 10 August 2021?”

Planners and researchers are expecting some unusual results because of the lockdowns. We don’t know if people recorded their workplace as if the lockdown wasn’t in place, or treated their home as their workplace. While a higher-than-expected number of “worked at home” responses might signal the latter, we can’t know for certain.

The 2021 census data won’t provide a reliable record of “normal” commuting patterns, nor an accurate record of commuting changes over time. It’s not even clear if work attendance and commuting patterns will ever return to their pre-COVID state.

What can we do about the census data?

So the big question is how can decision-makers usefully work with the data to correct for the distortion of COVID lockdowns? We offer the following suggestions.

Look at cities that weren’t in lockdown

One option is to use the broad transport patterns from the least-locked-down parts of Australia, such as Adelaide or Perth. We can use their results and changes in transport mode over time to help estimate the results across other cities.

Link to previous census results

Another option would be to look at previous census results on journey to work for cities and try to match or predict what would have been expected in 2021 for different transport modes and distances. A benefit of this model is that previous results are available at local neighbourhood level and bring in the local influences of transport types and distances.

Another idea would be to look at the occupations that people list on their census forms, then match occupation types to transport modes used in previous census results.

Match to household travel survey data

Transport departments collect household-level travel data across a number of cities including Sydney and Melbourne to understand how far people travel and what transport modes they use. These surveys could be used to model area-based differences in journey-to-work patterns based on more up-to-date commuting results than older census data.

Investigate other travel datasets

The use of big data has come a long way since 2016. Today we have a number of other public and private travel data sets that could be used. These include Google Mobility results, traffic light counts, road sensors and Myki/Opal/go card travel data.

These data sets could be linked or modelled with census results to get a better estimate of results in locked-down areas.

Quarterly and annual COVID surveys could also help to understand how transport has changed throughout the pandemic.

Assess against other government data

Data linkage is another area that the Australian Bureau of Statistics has been working over the years. An example is the Multi-Agency Data Integration Project , which has been designed to help gain further insights from census data. The Australian Tax Office holds employment and work-related vehicle claims that might also be helpful to identify transport modes and travel demands by area.

Strict privacy rules apply to these data, but government agencies working together could lead to better commuting data for cities affected by lockdowns in 2021.

All these options have strengths and weaknesses. None is as good as the complete set of census data unaffected by lockdowns. However, they are worth considering when 2021 journey-to-work results are released on October 12.

Transport planners and researchers are ingenious. They will likely find ways to correct for the above problems to assess and understand transport patterns across Australian cities. Now is the time for discussion and ideas about these issues and the unusual census results to ensure transport planning is based on data that are both sound and up-to-date.

• Transport policy
• Transport planning
• Transport data
• Census 2021
• COVID lockdowns
• Better Cities

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Journey to Work, 2000: Census 2000 Brief

Among the 128.3 million workers in the United States in 2000, 76 percent drove alone to work. In addition, 12 percent carpooled, 4.7 percent used public transportation, 3.3 percent worked at home, 2.9 percent walked to work, and 1.2 percent used other means (including motorcycle or bicycle). This report, one of a series that presents population and housing data collected during Census 2000, provides information on the place-of work and journey-to-work characteristics of workers 16 years and over who were employed and at work during the reference week. Data are shown for the United States, regions, states, counties, and metropolitan areas. The questions on place of work and journey to work in Census 2000 ask about commuting patterns and characteristics of commuter travel. Respondents’ answers provide information about where people work, how they travel, what time they leave for work, and how long it takes them to get there. The place-of-work questions provide information that is used to understand the geographic patterns of commuter travel and the volume of travel in “flows” between origins and destinations (e.g., home in a suburban county to work in a central city). The 1960 census was the first to ask place-of-work questions, including the name of the city or town where the work takes place, whether it is inside or outside the city limits, the name of the county, and the name of the state. Beginning with the 1970 census, the place-of-work information was expanded to include the street address and ZIP code of the work location. This information provides more precise data for transportation planners to use to address the increasing pressure on the national transportation infrastructure.

• Record URL: https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/5885

Economics and Statistics Administration

• Reschovsky, Clara
• Publication Date: 2004-3
• Media Type: Web
• Features: Figures; Maps; Tables;
• Pagination: 16p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Census ; Commuters ; Data collection ; Mode choice ; Nonmotorized transportation ; Public transit ; Telecommuting ; Work trips
• Identifier Terms: U.S. Bureau of the Census
• Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Transportation (General);

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01173182
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: C2KBR-33
• Files: NTL, TRIS
• Created Date: Sep 16 2010 12:42PM

A NSW Government website

• Activity Stream

Journey to Work

Transport for nsw.

Journey to Work (JTW) data are derived from the 5-yearly Census of Population and Housing conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

It includes data on employment by industry and occupation, and method of travel to work at a fine geographical level known as the travel zone.

This information is a valuable resource for the analysis and forecasting of employment, commuting patterns and land use changes.

Data and Resources

Derived from the 5-yearly Census by the ABS.

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Snapshot of commuting patterns for Census day 2011.

Journey to Work 2016 table.

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2016 Census topic: Journey to work

Release date: November 29, 2017 Updated on: December 2, 2019

The 2016 Census of Population Program offers a wide range of analysis, data, reference and geographical information according to topics (subjects) that paint a portrait of Canada and its population.

  Data products

• Census Profile, 2016 Census
• Focus on Geography Series, 2016 Census
• Data tables, 2016 Census – Journey to work
• Census Program Data Viewer, 2016 Census
• Census Profile Standard Error Supplement, Canada, provinces, territories, census divisions (CDs) and aggregate dissemination areas (ADAs), 2016 Census

  Analytical products

• The Daily as reported on November 29, 2017
• Commuters using sustainable transportation in census metropolitan areas
• Results from the 2016 Census: Commuting within Canada's largest cities
• Results from the 2016 Census: Long commutes to work by car
• Commuting in Canada's three largest cities
• Journey to work, 2016 Census of Population

  Reference material

• 2016 Census Dictionary: Journey to work
• Journey to work Reference Guide, Census of Population, 2016
• Release and Concepts Overview, 2016 Census of Population: Journey to work
• Guide to the Census of Population, 2016

  Geography

Key indicators, selected geographical area: canada.

% using public transit to get to work, 2016

Source: 2016 Census of Population

Average commuting duration, in minutes, 2016

Need journey to work information from previous censuses?

• 2011 Census Program Education and labour (Archived)
• 2006 Census Place of work and commuting to work (Archived)

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Grace Caskie’s Journey to Quantitative Psychology and Older Adults

A first-generation college student, the associate professor of counseling's education helped change her career path.

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Like many of the most interesting journeys, Grace Caskie’s professional path was not straightforward.

A first-generation college student, Caskie had strong math skills and initially thought she would become a high school math teacher. “As is pretty typical with first-gen students, I think, I really didn’t know all of the possible majors that were out there,” Caskie, associate professor of counseling psychology, says. However, a psychology course early on introduced Caskie to the world of quantitative psychology. This discovery brought together her math skills and newfound interest in psychology.

Al Forsyth, then a faculty member at Millersville University, was an early mentor who encouraged Caskie to change her major to psychology.

“Even after I became a psychology major, I kept taking statistics classes in the math department,” Caskie says. “Then in my senior year, Al said, ‘I think it would be really good for you to go to graduate school.’” With that encouragement, another door opened. Caskie chose the quantitative psychology doctoral program at the University of North Carolina, under the mentorship of Abigail Panter, and the program proved to be a good match to her interests.

After teaching statistics to undergraduate psychology students at UNC several times, Caskie worked at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center during the last two years of her graduate program, conducting statistical analyses and data management under the mentorship of Margaret Burchinal.

“My master's thesis and my dissertation were methodologically oriented and focused on children and adolescents,” she says.

As Caskie finished up her dissertation, her advisor suggested that she apply for a postdoctoral position to work on research projects housed within Penn State’s Gerontology Center. Her work with the Gerontology Center expanded Caskie’s research interests to include older adults. Caskie ended up spending six years at Penn State.

“I often joke that I got a second Ph.D. in that six-year period,” she says. “I attended weekly colloquia, lab meetings, and did a lot of reading and research.”

At the Gerontology Center, Caskie also met another important mentor—K. Warner Schaie. A world-renowned gerontology researcher, Schaie, who died in 2023, was director of the Center and led the Seattle Longitudinal Study (SLS) along with his wife, Sherry L. Willis. The mentorship provided by Schaie and Willis informed Caskie’s own research focusing on older adults once she accepted a faculty position with Lehigh’s College of Education (COE).

When Caskie started with the COE, a large part of her job was supporting other faculty and students as a methodologist. Over time, the College hired additional faculty with strong backgrounds in statistics, including Joan Fu who took over that role full time. This allowed Caskie to spend more time on her own research, although her teaching responsibilities remained statistics courses offered to students across the COE’s programs.

“Our students are incredibly bright and hardworking,” she says. “My courses are challenging, but I also try to provide lots of support along the way.”

Caskie knows that students have often had bad experiences with math classes or statistics in the past. And most COE students are coming to the COE to become principals, teachers, and counselors, not statisticians. However, Caskie helps her students see how proper use and deep understanding of statistical analyses can improve their professional practice—whatever that practice is.

Lauren Tillstrom Biegley, a Ph.D. student in Teaching Learning and Technology, regularly applies what she learned in Caskie’s introductory statistics class to her research.

“I saved the binder from Grace’s class, and I go back through it to run my stats analyses,” she says. “However, I most appreciate the passion and genuine excitement Grace has for statistics and teaching it to others.”

That enthusiasm is evident when discussing statistics with Caskie—even casually.

“I think everybody wants to learn to use the methodologies properly so that they can correctly interpret the literature that they're reading,” Caskie says. “I try to give students many opportunities to think about how these techniques can be applied to their own field.”

As for Caskie’s area of research, gerontology is a field that is growing. She shares that, by 2035, older adults (65+ years) will outnumber children (18 years and under) for the first time in U.S. history (U.S. Census Bureau, 2018). And, understanding how to support well-being and promote quality of life for this growing segment of our population has both societal and economic implications (Levy et al., 2020).

“In my research, I've been mostly studying how health and cognition are linked,” says Caskie. “Most recently, I’m examining how health and cognitive status influence trainees’—in particular counseling psychology and clinical psychology trainees’—perceptions of their work with older adult clients.”

Although baby boomers represent a significant growth in the number of older adults in the United States, Caskie says very few (less than 2 percent) of psychologists specialize in this population. Her research approaches the mismatch in two ways. “One is looking at what might motivate more interest in working with older populations,” she says. “The other is determining how health and cognitive status impact perceptions of older adults—not just by psychologist trainees, but by the general public.”

Recently, Caskie’s career came full circle at the 2024 American Psychological Association (APA) conference in Seattle. She chaired a symposium at the conference titled, Impact of K. Warner Schaie's Work on the Fields of Adult Development, Aging, and Lifespan Psychology.

“I put this symposium together for APA because Schaie had started the Seattle Longitudinal Study in 1956, and APA was held in Seattle this year,” Caskie says. “The timing seemed perfect to honor his memory.”

She also led the completion of fundraising as APA Division 20 president for the recently renamed K. Warner Memorial Fund for Adult Development and Aging.

“One of my presidential initiatives prioritized mentorship and funding for students and early career professionals,” she says. “As part of those efforts, we raised $100,000 to fully fund the memorial.”

To learn more about Caskie and her research, please visit her faculty page on the COE website.

Story by Beth Blew

Sixties Scoop survivors journey home to N.W.T. to reunite with family, reconcile past

‘a part of my soul and part of who i am is tied here and there’s no escaping it.’.

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Three sisters who call Fort Providence, N.W.T., home are on a journey of reunion. 

The sisters are survivors of the Sixties Scoop, a government practice in Canada from the 1960s to 1980s of removing Indigenous children from their homes and placing them in foster care or putting them up for adoption. The sisters grew up in separate parts of the country and didn't know about each other until their adult years. 

Delphine Gargan, Sariah Stanley and RavenSong Gargan, now in their late 50s, met as a group for the first time on Aug. 30 to travel together from Edmonton to their home community – where their mother grew up and where Delphine was born – to reconnect with family, the land and their pasts. 

For RavenSong, it's a chance to experience a piece of what was stolen from her.

"We hopped in the truck and we went looking for buffalo this morning and we said if we had grown up here we would have done that together as teenagers," she said.

"We're doing some of the things we've never done. Jumping on beds and things like that."

RavenSong said there is something different about being on her own land. The noise and vibrations she feels in the city stop when she comes home to Fort Providence. 

RavenSong, now living in Richmond, B.C., is the founder of a non-profit called the Sixty Scoop Indigenous Society of B.C. It focuses on reintroducing survivors to ceremony and tradition as a form of healing.  

The society secured funding from the 60's Scoop Healing Foundation to pay for travel expenses to bring survivors home. That's something RavenSong says the society hopes to do more of, and her board of directors decided that as president, she should have the experience of going home before she helps other survivors do the same. 

"I couldn't do it if my sisters weren't willing," she said. "It hasn't been easy for any of us to make commitments to anyone because of who we are and to make a commitment to do something this big with not knowing each other, that was a big thing. It was scary."

Putting the puzzle back together

Sariah, the middle sister, said she's now in a place in her life where she can explore her past. Sariah has been sober for five years and is living in Drayton Valley, Alta., working as an industrial medic. She first learned about her sisters in 2004. She was living in Windsor, Ont., at the time and got a call from RavenSong introducing herself and telling her about their other sister Delphine. It turned out Delphine was living just six blocks away. 

"It was surreal," she said. 

But life got in the way, Sariah moved for work, and she lost touch with her sisters. This time, she said, keeping in touch with her sisters will be for real.

"And it will come from a genuine place because of where I am in my life. I'm balanced and I'm settled and I think I'm in a good spot to be able to just keep in touch," she said. 

While in Fort Providence, the sisters put on a feast of salmon, rice and bannock for community members to come by and meet them.

Delphine, the eldest sister, described relatives coming into the seniors centre and hugging them and telling the sisters they love them.

"I think a lot of them were overjoyed, number one that we're still alive," Delphine said.

Delphine, now a cook and paramedic living in Revelstoke, B.C., said it's been amazing to spend time with her sisters, but she's also mourning the life that was taken from her. 

"A sense of loss, of culture and family and community, and we come here trying to get some of that back, trying to regain some of that back," she said.  

"It's kind of reopening up the trauma of being a part of the Sixties Scoop where you felt unloved, unwanted. Who am I? Where's my identity? We're trying to put the puzzles back together as best we can so we can continue healing."

What they didn't expect

Before leaving the hamlet, the sisters visited the cemetery. They wanted to pay their respects to relatives buried there. What they found was their late mother. 

She died in Victoria, B.C., they said, and they didn't know she would be buried in the N.W.T. community. 

Sariah said she's happy her mother is home. 

"She is where she needs to be and hopefully she can find some peace," she said. 

But for RavenSong, she sees it as a betrayal. 

"They knew that she had three daughters and they chose to do a burial or a memorial day for my mom and never told any of us," she said.

"We want to be part of these things. These things are important. Unbeknownst to [Fort Providence's community members], they've been in my heart and in my thoughts every day for 57-and-a-half-years."

Though some living in the hamlet have wanted to meet the sisters and share stories about their mother, not everyone in the community has provided the warm welcome they hoped for.

"I think the reconnection is between us three here. As far as reconnection within the community, even though we're from here, we weren't raised here so we're strangers," Sariah said. "We're strangers and we're treated as such." 

Lew Jobs, a contractor with the Sixty Scoop Indigenous Society of B.C., travelled north with the three women. He's also a Sixties Scoop survivor originally from Tuktoyaktuk, N.W.T., and has had his own experiences returning home.

"I just share with them how it was for me with my family welcoming me, but there was some rejection there as well," he said. 

"I think … the misconception is people think we want something out of that when we come home. We don't. We just want to meet 'em. I just want to know where I'm from."

Jobs said after a childhood of being passed from home to home and growing up in a place where Indigenous children often don't look like their adopted family, that rejection can be especially triggering for children of the Sixties Scoop. 

"After a while, it doesn't feel like you belong anywhere," he said. 

Joachim Bonnetrouge, an elder in Fort Providence and former chief of Deh Gáh Got'ı̨ę First Nation said the community members who are skeptical of welcoming the women home are facing their own journeys and can be suspicious of newcomers given the community's history of colonization.  

"It's natural because, you know, we've had quite a dark history," he said.

"So that's what we're still dealing with."

Elder hopes community will learn to welcome survivors

In a federal Sixties Scoop settlement, 21,210 people were deemed eligible for compensation, according to Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, though the actual number of Indigenous children taken from their families is thought to be much higher. 

But the overrepresentation of Indigenous children in care didn't end with the Sixties Scoop. It's a battle Delphine says she continues to face as she fights with Child and Family Services for care over her grandson in Thunder Bay, Ont.  

She said she's been told she wouldn't be an appropriate caregiver because of her tumultuous childhood as a Sixties Scoop victim. 

• More than half the children in care are Indigenous, census data suggests
• 74% of youth in care in Alberta are Indigenous. Here's what 2 of them had to say

Bonnetrouge said there are hundreds of children who were taken from Fort Providence and that the community will learn over time how to welcome them home in a good way. 

With the potential for thousands of survivors to return to their home communities, and hundreds in just Fort Providence, RavenSong said she hopes to establish a kind of protocol around what it looks like to welcome them home, hoping to avoid some of the feelings of rejection from her community. 

She said she hopes to come back to Fort Providence and establish a connection with the community. The other sisters aren't yet sure whether they'll join her but all three sisters agree the trip has been one they will never forget. 

"A part of my soul and part of who I am is tied here," Sariah said. "And there's no escaping it."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Natalie Pressman is a reporter with CBC North in Yellowknife. Reach her at: [email protected].

• Follow Natalie Pressman on Twitter

Related Stories

• Sixties Scoop society launches in B.C. to support survivors
• Sixties Scoop survivor reconnects with birth mom, discovers her culture, decades after separation
• Gathering in Fort Smith, N.W.T., 'first step' in longer journey toward healing

Understanding Place of work data

Exploring the concepts and purpose of place of work data, to understand transport needs and commuting needs for the Australian public

People use Place of work ( POWP ) data for a variety of reasons, including when assessing public transport needs, measuring commuting distance and investigating local opportunities for work. The Census is the only data source with this specific information available Australia wide on a small area basis. Place of work information is only applicable to the 12 million people that were engaged in work in the week before the Census (10 August 2021).

POWP data provides information on where employed people aged 15 years or over worked in the week prior to the Census. POWP data is determined from the responses to the ‘Business name’ and ‘Workplace address’ questions on the Census form about the main place of work for the respondent in the last week. It is coded to geographic areas called Destination zones ( DZNs ). The data from POWP, Place of usual residence ( PURP ) and Method of travel to work ( MTWP ) can be cross classified to provide data on journey to work. This can be used to examine the movements of people to and from work, to analyse transport patterns and to assist in planning and development of transport systems.

Method of transport

MTWP provides information on the transport methods employed people used to get to work on the day of the Census. On the Census form, respondents could record multiple responses for method of transport. The majority of people however, only listed one transport method, with 2.0% of respondents listing multiple modes of transport. One exception was walking which is only included where walking was the sole method of transport to work, e.g. a person who caught the train then walked to work would be listed simply as catching the train to work.

The full listing of the combinations for multiple modes of transport used can be found in the  2021 Census dictionary . These can be re-grouped or recoded in different ways depending on the needs of the data user. When comparing MTWP totals against the number of total people employed, the number of people who did not go to work or worked at home on the day of the Census should be considered.

POWP and MTWP may look different in 2021 when compared to previous censuses due to the impact COVID-19 had on working patterns.

A number of regions across the country were in various stages of restrictions on and around Census Night, resulting in a greater number of people working from home. This is likely to have impacted responses to POWP. To see an approximate guide to the restrictions in place around this time, see COVID-19 restrictions by Local Government Areas .

In 2021, an instruction was added to the online form and the Census website to help people in areas affected by COVID-19 restrictions answer the Place of work question. People were instructed to list their employer's usual workplace address if they worked from home due to COVID-19 restrictions. This was to discourage people listing their home address as their workplace address.

Analysis of the proportion of people who listed the same Mesh Block for their usual residence and place of work showed only a slight increase from 2016 (7.3%) to 2021 (8.4%). Given so many people were experiencing COVID-19 restrictions on Census Night, this is a good indicator that in general, people completed the form as instructed.

Interpreting the data

The data items related to POWP have different time references. These should be considered when interpreting the data:

• Place of enumeration refers to the place where a person was counted on Census Night.
• Place of usual residence is where a person usually lives. It may or may not be the location where that person was counted on Census Night.
• Method of travel to work refers to how a person travelled to work on the day of the Census.
• Place of work refers to the address of the main job the respondent had in the week prior to the Census.

This difference in time frames can produce outliers in the data for a variety of reasons.

Example 1: Walked to Brisbane from the Gold Coast 

A person spent the night before the Census in Brisbane with a friend and then walked to work in Brisbane city. After work she caught a train back to her parent's home on the Gold Coast (which she regarded as her usual place of residence) on the evening of Census Night, which was the location where she was enumerated.

Example 2: Caught a ferry to Alice Springs from Manly

A person mainly worked in Alice Springs during the week prior to the Census. However, the person could have:

• moved to Manly the day before the Census and taken a ferry to their new place of employment, or
• been a fly-in/fly-out worker who usually lived in Manly and was enumerated at home, but who temporarily visited the Sydney office the day of the Census, before heading back to Alice Springs for work.

Which to use: Place of enumeration or Place of usual residence?

Both Place of enumeration and Place of usual residence are valid ways of determining the origin of a journey, but they tell different stories. Some things to consider when looking at this data are:

• fly-in/fly-out workers and the different ways they may have reported themselves on the form
• enumeration shows an average day of the year (capturing visiting or holiday tendencies) whereas usual residence demonstrates more long-term trends
• usual residence is unlikely to reflect the movements of an average day, especially in inner city areas where numerous visitors may use transport and do not usually live in those specific areas.

Please see  Comparing Place of enumeration with Place of usual residence for further information.

Troubleshooting

Why am i not getting any data.

It may be that no people resided in one particular area and worked in another area. This is common when cross-classifying POWP data with other variables such as occupation, industry and MTWP. 

I am trying to get a reasonable comparison with other survey data

Be mindful of the geography you are using. If you are trying to compare Census data to other surveys, double check the definition of the geography for each.

My totals don't add up

Be careful when validating against employed totals. Figures may not add up for the following reasons:

• not including the Not stated category of POWP
• not including the Not stated category of MTWP
• if labour force is Not stated, then the POWP of that person is coded Not applicable
• if using 1996 data, Work destination study area ( DZSP ) must be used in conjunction with Work destination zone ( DZNP ) to fully define the DZNs
• the removal of additivity in the process of perturbation.

I am trying to compare Place of work data over different censuses

Place of work data has been produced since 1971, however the DZNs have been redefined after each Census to account for changes and growth within each state and territory. This means data is not comparable across censuses. Other reasons include: 

• data was not available at DZNs level prior to 2011, except by customised data request
• changes to the question about Place of work, especially in the instructions for people with no place of work, and in coding persons to Not applicable and Not stated categories
• the 2016 Census was the first time the IFPOWP variable was available. This allows data users to identify not only if a DZN has been imputed, but precisely how much information the respondent had provided about their Place of work. Prior to 2016, Place of work was listed as Not stated for respondents who did not provide enough information.
• prior to 1986, all data was at the LGA level rather than Statistical Local Area (SLA) level. This is because the Australian Statistical Geography Classification was first introduced during the 1986 Census.
• prior to 2001 data on journey to work was available only for those people who lived and worked within study areas. Those who worked outside the study area (but were enumerated within it) were coded as 'Worked outside study area'. People enumerated outside study areas were not included in the data, regardless of where they worked.

I want to cross-tabulate Place of work with other geographies

A table cross-referencing SA2 of origin (Place of usual residence) by SA2 of destination (Place of work) for all of Australia should be avoided due to its size and difficulties in processing. A similar table could be attempted at a state level with additional cross-border SA2s added in. Areas that are smaller than an SA2 should not be cross-tabulated with Place of work, even at a state level. 

SA1 and DZNs should only be attempted for specific areas of interest. 

It is important to calculate cell counts before attempting a Place of work table as they can very easily exceed the maximum table size recommendation. The recommendation is that they are equal to or less than the target population (i.e. employed persons, or a subset thereof).