Measurement of services: Recent ABS experience

Service industries are becoming an increasingly important part of our economies. Not surprisingly there is a corresponding interest in statistics about service industries. The challenges in compiling statistics are often very different to other industries. This paper describes the programme for service industry statistics in the Australian Bureau of Statistics. It also describes some of the more interesting developments in Australia - new presentations in statistics such as satellite accounts; globalisation statistics including the activities of foreign affiliates; knowledge based economy and society statistics; direct volume measurement particularly for largely non-market industries such as health and education services; and price statistics for service industries such as finance, telecommunications and computer software services. These statistics are very important for measuring productivity for example.