Short-term business statistics - dissemination
Data from February 2023
Planned article update: 2024
This article provides an overview of the dissemination in short-term business statistics (STS). It is part of a set of background articles treating various methodological aspects of short-term business statistics.
Full article
Dissemination tools and dedicated section
European short-term business statistics mostly are disseminated on-line, paper publications have become the exception. Currently there are no more paper publications exclusively dedicated to STS data. However, the print publication Key figures on European business contains, among data from many other areas, some selected STS data.
For STS, the main publications are described in this article. All short-term statistics related information – data, reference metadata, publications, methodological information, legal texts, etc. – is available at the section dedicated to short-term business statistics on the Eurostat website.
News releases
In the area of short-term business statistics, Eurostat publishes 48 news releases per year, i.e. a monthly release for the four central STS indicators: industrial production, industrial producer prices, production in construction and volume of retail trade. These STS indicators are also part of the Principal European economic indicators (PEEIs) which are used for the monitoring of the economic and financial development of the Euro area.
The publication of the news releases is announced in advance in Eurostat's release calendar and in the STS release calendar. News releases are issued at 11:00 CET on the Eurostat website and they are free of charge. The news releases provide the most recent data for the EU and the euro area as well as for the Member States. Apart from the headline figure (e.g. the production in industry) a breakdown to sub-aggregates (intermediate goods, capital goods, etc. is provided). The data are published as indices (calendar adjusted as well as seasonally and calendar adjusted) and as month-on-month (comparison with the month before) and year-on-year (comparison with the same month of the last year) growth rates. The month-on-month growth rates are based on indices which are seasonally as well as calendar adjusted. The year-on-year growth rates are based on the calendar adjusted indices. This practice follows the guidelines of the European Statistical System on seasonal adjustment since for the year-on-year comparison seasonal factors should not be relevant.
Eurostat online database
All STS indicators are published in the Eurostat online database. The extraction modes give users the possibility to download data according to their specific needs as regards indicator, countries and EU aggregates, format (unadjusted, calendar adjusted, calendar and seasonally adjusted), length of time series, activity breakdown. All data are provided in the form of indices and in the form of growth rates, as monthly data, quarterly, and annual data. Access to all data is free of charge.
In accordance with the revision policy for the Principal European economic indicators (PEEIs) European aggregates for all PEEIs and for retail trade turnover are generally released and revised only once per month. The dates of the updates are published in the release calendar. National data however are revised whenever new information becomes available (for more details see the background article on revisions in short-term statistics).
Short-term statistics main tables
Some key data tables (e.g. pre-selection of MIGs for industry, food, non-food for retail trade) are displayed in this section of the Eurostat website.
This page is the main entry point to all STS data, metadata, methodology and publications. This part of the Eurostat website is available in English, German and French. The subpage on the short-term business statistics publications is the portal of news releases, news items, Statistics Explained articles, etc.
STS news items
About three to six times per year, Eurostat publishes news items with STS data on the Eurostat website. These news items promote new dissemination products, data releases, new or updated Statistics Explained articles.
Statistics Explained
Statistics Explained is Eurostat's central publication platform. Within Statistics Explained a number of articles on short-term statistics has been published. Overview articles provide information on all individual short-term indicators as well as data and political context.
Background articles explain specific statistical-methodological issues pertinent to short-term statistics such as the compilation of European aggregates, seasonal adjustment, revisions, the legal base etc. Moreover, a glossary with important statistical terms and an introductory article on STS are published in Statistics Explained.
Statistics Explained contains more than 20 articles on all STS indicators as well as more than 10 methodological background articles written in an accessibly manner and a glossary of STS terms. The STS Statistics Explained articles are usually updated at least once per year.
European Statistical Recovery Dashboard
The European Statistical RecoveryDashboard is regularly published since December 2020 to track the economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. It collects key data on the European society and economy. The Dashboard currently includes six STS indicators such as industrial production, production in construction, retail trade, services production (all monthly), business registrations and bankruptcy declarations (both quarterly).
Euro Indicators Dashboard
The Euro Indicators Dashboard is an on-line tool on the Eurostat website, visualising the data of various euro indicators. The dashboard includes six STS indicators such as industrial production, industrial producer prices, import prices, production in construction, retail trade and services turnover, with data for totals and for main industrial groupings.
Business Sector Profile
The BSP is an economic dashboard where users can select data of their business sector of interest. This interactive visualisation tool highlights the recent and long-term developments of businesses & markets. Among other business relevant indicators, the tool includes STS data on turnover, production, prices and employment.
Key figures on European business
The 2022 edition of the Key figures on European business on-line publication presents a selection of key business statistics indicators for the European Union, its individual Member States and European Free Trade Association (EFTA) countries, drawing from the rich collection of data that are available at Eurostat. The publication covers a broad array of information providing an insight into the business economy across the EU. It describes the structure, conduct and performance of businesses in the EU at a detailed sectoral level or it can be used to analyse the trends within the EU’s business economy, tracing the monthly or quarterly developments for indicators such as output, output prices, employment or gross wages and salaries.
Reference Metadata
Via the methodological page of the dedicated section and also via the M-icon at the top of the database tree reference metadata are available for the short-term statistics indicators.
The metadata are provided in the Euro SDMX Metadata structure (ESMS) and document methodologies, quality and the statistical production processes in general. The ESMS uses 21 high-level concepts, with a limited breakdown of sub-items, strictly derived from the list of cross domain concepts in the SDMX Content Oriented Guidelines (2009). In addition to the European metadata Eurostat also publishes metadata on short-term business statistics in the annex to the Eurostat STS metadata file.
Data formats
European STS aggregates are published as indices or as growth rates. In particular, growth rates constitute a natural instrument for the analysis of cyclical developments. Some Member States also disseminate absolute figures for STS data. All STS indicators (indices and growth rates) are published to one decimal place. This corresponds with the data transmission of national statistical institutes to Eurostat the majority of which is also to one decimal place.
All STS indices are published with the same base period (base year). Base years are changed every five years and normally are years ending with a 0 or 5. The current base year is 2015 (2015=100). The next base year exceptionally will be 2021, it will be implemented from 2024.
Where available, data are published with a monthly reference period (e.g. industrial production, production in construction, retail trade volume). In several cases the reference period is the quarter (e.g. turnover in services, labour input data, business registrations and bankruptcy declarations). In addition to these high frequency data annual aggregates are produced und published.
Growth rates are provided as month-on-month rates, as quarter-on-quarter rates and as annual rates (year-on-year, t/t-12). Indices and growth rates are published in different forms of adjustments, i.e. as unadjusted (gross) data, calendar adjusted data and data that are calendar and seasonally adjusted. (Note that it would be theoretically possible to adjust data for seasonal effects but not for calendar effects. Such data are however not published by Eurostat.)
Confidential data
Sometimes it is possible that national STS data for certain economic activities would allow identifying individual businesses, e.g. when there is only one major business in a certain industry dominating that sector. In such cases short-term statistics cannot publish country data for reasons of confidentiality.
Despite the fact that confidential data cannot be published or transmitted to external users Eurostat must nevertheless receive the data from national statistical institutes in order to calculate European aggregates. Data which are declared confidential by the Member States are transmitted to Eurostat marked with a special confidentiality flag. Eurostat does not publish these data.
Data that are sent before the publication by national institutes and are under embargo are not published by Eurostat before the national embargo expires.
National data that are of a sufficient quality to calculate European aggregates but are not reliable enough at the national level can be also flagged confidential in the Eurostat dissemination products.
Apart from the STS indicators the weights used by Eurostat for compiling indices are sometimes confidential because they might also allow identifying individual businesses.
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