A common social media gripe when news organisations report on job numbers is that the figures are inflated because people who work for one hour a week are counted as employed.
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They are counted as employed, but there have never seemed to be many such people.
For example, Australian Bureau of Statistics figures showed that in the year to December, part-time workers averaged 16.6 hours of work per week in Tasmania and 16.9 hours nationally.
With people working 35 hours or fewer per week counted as part-timers, those averages would not suggest a large number of people working one hour a week.
The ABS made that more clear on Thursday, with a report about how many Australians worked one hour per week.
It said about one employed person per 1000 worked one hour a week in 2018.
If the same rate applied in Tasmania, there would be about 250 Tasmanians working an hour a week, based on the ABS' trend terms estimate that the state had 248,100 employed people in December.
The ABS found 97 of every 100 employed Australians usually worked for seven hours or more per week.
ABS chief economist Bruce Hockman said one hour per week might seem to be a low threshold, but it was important in counting everyone involved in production activities in the economy.
"It is a measure of who is employed, not how fully employed people are, which is covered by other measures," he said.
"While public attention may be focused on employment and unemployment, these two statistics alone cannot highlight whether people want more work, what their earnings are and what employment conditions they are entitled to.
"No single labour market measure can answer every question, which is why the ABS releases such a broad range of information throughout the year.
"In combination, these provide a greater understanding of Australia’s labour market."
The ABS said its underemployment figures were particularly useful for understanding the extent to which employed people were fully employed.
It said about 8.8-9 per cent of employed Australians were underemployed (working and wanting more hours) in 2018.
" … this was higher for people usually working relatively low hours per week, at around one in three people who were underemployed," it said.
"This suggests that around two in three employed people (working fewer than 10 hours per week) were not wanting to work extra hours or were not available to do so."