1. LAMAS Working Group 19-20 June 2013
Agenda Item 5.1 Unemployment in Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure (MIP) scoreboard statistics Laurs Nørlund,(Director of National Accounts, Prices and Key indicators)

2. MIP Scoreboard
Eleven indicators covering BoP/IIP, Financial Accounts, National Accounts, Labour Market, other (exchange rates, etc)
Expectations from high level users
Quality and reliability for all indicators under the MIP
EU Council invited in 2011 & 12 Commission (Eurostat) to take all necessary measures
Reliable procedure for compilation
Continuous improvement

3. Content of the MIP Regulation
EP/ Council Regulation titled:
Regulation on provision and quality of statistics for the macroeconomic imbalance procedure
Cover several aspects relating to quality assurance framework, in particular
Quality reporting in line with the Code of Practice
Data coverage
Cooperation between ESTAT and NSIs
Methodological Aspects

4. EC (Eurostat) submitted a proposal for a EP/Council regulation: why?
Provide a cross-domain legal framework for ensuring the quality of the MIP indicators produced by ESS
Define who does what and when and where and how and why
Build on existing practices in order to avoid duplication

5. Data Sources and Statistical Methods
Preliminary investigation done to enquiry on the eleven MIP indicators.
Best practices
Best practices should be spread to other indicators/domains
Missing or incomplete metadata
Stocktake existing information
Assess needs and provide support
Take eventually corrective action

6. The MIP is here now: what's up for the Unemployment rate?
Dedicated section on Eurostat Website plus dedicated MIP team
The indicator is defined as the three-year backward average over of the unemployment rate from annual data provided by Eurostat, with a threshold of 10%)
See dedicated DG/ECFIN occasional paper here
Higher visibility of the indicator at political level
Employment rate was already included within target indicator for Europe 2020: now unemployment rate is included within the MIP

7. Unemployment rate relevant for MIP
It is the ILO unemployment rate for age group 15-74
It is the 3-year backward average
It is the rate as published by Eurostat
The average is calculated from the breaks-free time series reconstructed for the monthly unemployment rate

8. Unemployment rate vs. other MIP indicators
LFS Standard Quality reports are deeply developed
includes also inventories related information as required by the MIP regulation
Eligible to be among the best practices
Consider to make public the detailed quality report (not just the summary).

9. Next MIP steps related to LAMAS
Further information gathering and digging into statistical methods
Involvement of NSIs for the possible enhancement of the indicator
EP/council discussion on the MIP regulation is likely to take about 1 year

10. LAMAS is invited to
comment on the general approach to assure a reliable procedure for the compilation of MIP statistics
make proposals for how to arrive at a common template for future Quality Reports and Inventories of sources and methods, taking account of the existing documentation;
assist Eurostat with the quality assessment of the MIP indicators in autumn 2013 in view of the annual Alert Mechanism Report, especially when existing metadata (including inventories of sources and methods) are incomplete.

11. Q&A
Thanks!