1. LAMAS Working Group 7 – 8 December 2016
Agenda Item 4.4 Variance estimation in the LFS
Eurostat

2. Reminder
Variance of annual net changes and annual levels requested by DG EMPL
15 indicators by June 2017
23 indicators by June 2018
Definitions provided by mail to all countries
Dissemination only on statistical significance (only Yes/No)

3. Transmission from MS
Data transmission of PSU, STRATA, SSU and FSWEIGHT on-going
2015 data not yet received from 12 countries (AT, BE, DE, FI, HR, IE, IT, LU, NL, RO, SE and SK)
Missing or not applicable values must be blanked
MS who estimate variance by themselves should send these additional columns as well
Do we ask to MS who estimate by themselves to transmit add columns : EU aggregate, to compare results, will be asked in future.
2015 missing countries to list

4. Results from MS consultation
Eurostat will estimate the variance for 19 countries:
BE, BG, CY, FI, GR, HR, IE, LT, LU, MT, NL, PL, PT, RO, SI, SK, UK, CH and MK
13 countries will estimate the variance by themselves:
AT, CZ, DE, DK, EE, ES, FR, HU, IT, LV, SE, IS and NO
Position may change in future

5. Way forward SAS programs available soon Data transmission to continue
Choice between 2 methods: Taylor linearisation / Bootstrap
Extended to all DG EMPL indicators
Detailed output (CVs, estimates, punctual variance, net change variance and significance)
Data transmission to continue
Template for net changes results available soon
Results will be shared with MS before being sent to DG EMPL
Eurostat will use in priority Taylor and if Taylor doesn't give results then Boostrap : Taylor is most robust
Boostrap can be computationally intensive and the resulting variance estimates may be less stable than other methods such as the linearisation method.
If the two are not appliacle the answer will be not.
The net change can be long to estimate so data have to be send on time to allow us to fit the June deadline.

6. LAMAS is invited to: Continue data transmission of additional columns
Report feedback on the SAS code
Take note of the timeline
Report their estimates on net changes (if concerned)