Panel discussion: Q2a A.S. Young ILO Bureau of Statistics

ILO-Comparable annual employment and unemployment estimates Requirements –Source of data: regular labour force surveys that can generate annual data, e.g. continuous surveys, monthly, quarterly or 6-monthly surveys, or an annual survey with period that is considered as representative of the year. –Survey concepts: Inclusion in labour force of CFW, non-seeking unemployed, lay-offs, armed forces (conscripts and career members), minimum age –Coverage: Complete geographical (including all rural), total non-institutional population, all branches of economic activity, all sectors Adjustments: –Full coverage, standardized age groups for core active ages, annual averages Series (total, sex, yearly for 10 years) –LFPR, unemployment rate, labour force (civilian, total), employment (total, age groups, economic sectors), unemployment (total, age groups) Metadata: –National source (title, coverage, type and time reference), Concept and definition differences (inclusions & exclusions), Adjustments, Averaging method

Metadata France Source: Official monthly estimates of unemployment based on the annual Employment Survey (LFS) and monthly records of the National Employment Agency. Official quarterly estimates of employment based on Population Censuses updated by various administrative sources i.e. social security bodies, and establishment surveys. Population covered: All employed and unemployed persons aged 15 years and over living in private households, including career members of the armed forces. Conscripts are excluded as is the institutional population i.e. hospital, school and hotel staff living within an establishment, members of religious communities, mobile homes, prison populations, seafarers, etc. National data: Annual averages based on monthly or quarterly observations. Concept differences: Employment: Excluded (a) conscripts treated as inactive; (b) Persons who worked only a few hours during the reference week United Kingdom Source: Labour Force Survey, continuous. Population covered: All persons aged16 years and over living in private households, including career armed forces personnel, plus students in residence halls (enumerated at parents' address), plus National Health Service (NHS) and hospital staff living in NHS/hospital trust accommodations. Other institutional populations and communal army bases are excluded. National data: The survey is continuous, providing quarterly results. Three-month rolling averages are published on a monthly basis. These are used to calculate the annual averages. The UK working age population is for women and for men. Civilian excludes armed forces based on SOC2000 (a new question introduced in the LFS from Spring 2003 gives more comprehensive measure of armed forces employees than provided by SOC2000). Concept differences; Employment: Excluded (a) military in army bases; (b) unpaid apprentices.

Adjustments (a) are included in employment and total labour force and grouped with career members of the armed forces under Services and in age-groups and The data on (b) can be obtained from population censuses and the employment survey. However, the national authorities consider it incorrect to combine employment evaluation methods using annual series based on census benchmarks updated by administrative records with employment survey data (LFS). Moreover the order of magnitude of such persons is insignificant. Working Age population and all estimates have been provided for the population 16 years and over. (a) are included, based on the Employer Survey which provides the armed forces figures. The LFS reports armed forces (from private households) around 120,000 to 130,000; by comparison, the UK Employer Survey gives a total armed forces figure of just over 200,000, not considered a very significant difference by the national authorities. For civilian employment estimates, armed forces personnel living in private households have been removed. (b) is insignificant: the LFS captures unpaid family workers and people on government training schemes or other trade apprenticeships. The number of apprentices responding “no” to having done any paid work in the reference week should not be significant. The number of unpaid family workers is around 100,000; the number on training programmes 150,000, so missing unpaid apprentices should represent a considerably smaller group.