Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union

F3: Labour market

2920 Luxembourg LUXEMBOURG

This document covers all the thirty-five participating countries providing Eurostat with micro-data from their labour force surveys in 2018: the Member States of the European Union, the United Kingdom, three EFTA countries (Iceland, Norway and Switzerland), and four candidate countries, i.e. Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Turkey. All the territories of participating countries are covered, except for Cyprus which only covers the areas under the control of the government of the Republic of Cyprus. Since 2014, also the French overseas departments are covered (Guadeloupe, Martinique, Guyane, La Réunion), with the exception of Mayotte.

The EU-LFS covers persons in private households. However, in several countries also members of collective households are sampled, either directly (register based sampling frames) or indirectly through their relationship with the sampled household.

The population interviewed about the employment status is 15 years and more for all participating countries, with the exception of Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom (which interview people aged 16 and more) as well as Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Hungary, Finland, Sweden and Norway (people aged 15-74), Iceland (people aged 16-74) and North Macedonia (people aged 15-79). 

Legal basis: The EU-LFS is based on European legislation since 1973. The principal legal act is the Council Regulation (EC) No 577/98. The regulations are an important element assuring the quality of the EU-LFS. They stipulate the rules and guidelines to assure the comparability of the results by regulating the survey designs, the survey characteristics and the methodology of the EU-LFS. A detailed overview on the EU-LFS regulations is published in Statistics Explained ‘EU-LFS – main features and legal basis’. In addition to European regulations, many participating countries have their own national legislation for the conduct of a labour force survey. Information on the national laws or regulations is not collected for this report.

In 2018 the participation in the EU-LFS is compulsory in fourteen participating countries (Belgium, Germany, Greece, Spain, France, Italy, Cyprus, Luxembourg, Malta, Austria, Portugal, Slovakia, Norway and Turkey), and voluntary in the other countries.

The EU-LFS is designed as a continuous quarterly survey with interviews spread uniformly over all weeks of a quarter. Each reference week starts on Monday and ends on Sunday. The first week of a year or quarter is defined as the week that includes the first Thursday of the year or the quarter. All countries conduct the LFS as a continuous survey.

All participating countries in the EU-LFS produce quarterly and annual estimates.

This quality report complements the statistical reports describing the Characteristics of the national surveys in the Member States, Candidate Countries and the EFTA countries, the Quality report of the European Union Labour Force Survey 2018 and methodological online publication EU labour force survey in Statistics Explained.

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For information on different elements of the statistical processing, please consult: EU Labour Force Survey EU – Methodology (Statistics Explained).

For information on source data see country reports.

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For information on data collection see country reports.

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Relevance is an attribute of statistics measuring the degree to which statistical information meets current and potential needs of the users. It depends on whether all statistics that are needed are produced and the extent to which concepts used (definitions, classifications etc.) reflect user needs. It can be assessed by analysing the different users, who they are, what needs they have, whether they are satisfied etc.

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Although adhering to the EU-regulations on the EU-LFS, countries do not always provide data for all the variables. The reason can be, for example, the (temporary) inability to implement a variable in the national questionnaire or because of insufficient time for testing a required change. 

Structural variables may be collected and transmitted for an annual sub-sample only (see section. 2.8). Household data is another special case. In line with the provisions of Council Regulation 577/98, Denmark, Luxembourg, Finland and Sweden provide data for complete households only for an annual sub-sample of their normal samples of individuals. Norway only covers family members of working age, but e.g. no children below 15 yet. Iceland does not send any data for households, while Switzerland has a general derogation in that respect.

For a summary of the completeness of the EU-LFS, please consult: Quality report of the European Union Labour Force Survey 2018  (chapter 3).

Specific country information is available by clicking on the national reference metadata (country reports).

The accuracy of statistical outputs in the general statistical sense is the degree of closeness of computations or estimates to the exact or true values that the statistics were intended to measure. 

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Sampling errors affect only sample surveys and arise because not all units of the frame population are surveyed. The frame is a device that permits access to population units, such as a list of households with addresses. The sampling frame is the reference list(s) from which the sample (e.g. individuals, households, addresses or dwellings) is drawn. Official surveys, like the EU-LFS, use probability sampling. This makes it possible to quantify the sampling errors which can be expressed in terms of confidence intervals.

The EU-LFS calculates the sampling error for the following indictors:  number of employed, employment rate, number of part-time employed, average actual hours of work per week, number of unemployed, unemployment rate and youth unemployment rate.

For a summary of the sampling errors of the indicators, please consult: Quality report of the European Union Labour Force Survey 2018 (chapter 4.2).

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Coverage errors (or frame errors) are due to divergences between the target population and the frame population. Possible divergence types are under-coverage (i.e. the frame population does not include all units of the target population), over-coverage (i.e. the frame population includes units which do not belong to the target population) and misclassification (i.e. units in the frame population which belong to the target population but are wrongly classified).

For a summary of the over-coverage of the EU-LFS, please consult: Quality report of the European Union Labour Force Survey 2018 (chapter 4.3).

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Measurement errors are errors that occur during data collection and cause the recorded values of variables to be different from the true ones (see Quality report of the European Union Labour Force Survey 2018 - chapter 4.3)

Non-response errors occur when the survey fails to get a response to one, or possibly all, of the questions.

The term encompasses a wide variety of reasons for non-collection of data: impossible to contact, not at home, unable to answer, incapacity, refusal, inaccessible, unreturned questionnaire, etc. Non-response could lead to a reduction in the actual size of the sample, and consequently to an increase in variance. This also produces a bias if the non-respondents have different characteristics from the respondents for the survey variables (see Quality report of the European Union Labour Force Survey 2018 - chapter 4.3). 

Unit non-response occurs when no data are collected about a population unit designated for data collection. 

Item non-response occurs when data only on some but not all the survey variables are collected about a designated population unit. 

Between data collection and the beginning of statistical analysis for the production of statistics, data must undergo a certain processing: coding, data entry, data editing, imputation, etc. Errors introduced at these stages are called processing errors. No estimates can be produced at Eurostat about the rate of processing errors in the EU-LFS.

Imputation is a response to deficiencies in the data received. In a sample survey the reasons for imputation could be non-response (usually item non-response) or to correct values affected by measurement or processing errors.

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For statistical processes involving seasonal adjustment, a quality report should include a section on this topic. 

The European Statistics Code of Practice requires that a revision follows standard, well-established and transparent procedures.

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For a summary of transmission period and the dissemination of the data by Eurostat, please consult: Quality report of the European Union Labour Force Survey 2018 (chapter 5). 

Timeliness is the length of time between data availability and the event or phenomenon they describe.

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Punctuality is the time lag between the actual delivery of data and the target date on which they were scheduled for release as announced in an official release calendar, laid down by Regulations or previously agreed among partners. 

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Coherence measures the adequacy of the statistics to be combined in different ways and for various uses. The coherence of two or more statistical outputs refers to the degree to which the statistical processes by which they were generated used the same concepts — classifications, definitions, and target populations — and harmonized methods. Coherent statistical outputs have the potential to be validly combined and used jointly. It is, however, generally easier to show cases of incoherence than to prove coherence.

Comparability is a measurement of the impact of differences in applied statistical concepts, measurement tools and procedures where statistics are compared between geographical areas or over time.

A common framework regulation (1), common variable definitions (2), common explanatory notes (3) and a common regulation regarding the definition of unemployment and the twelve principles of questionnaire construction (4) serve to ensure comparability of the statistics between the participating countries. This is, however, mainly true for the main characteristics, employment and unemployment where particular definitions and sequence of questions are part of the EU legislation. For other variables, each country has the responsibility to ensure that the national survey provides data that are compatible with the EU definitions and of the same quality as for the core variables.

As most of the variables are defined in accordance with recommendations of the International Labour Organization (ILO) and other international organizations, the main statistics from the EU-LFS are directly comparable to those of other industrialized countries, especially those of the other members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).  For a summary of the divergences of national concepts from European concepts, please consult: Quality report of the European Union Labour Force Survey 2018 (chapter 6.2).

([1])    Council Regulation (EC) No 577/98.

([2])    Commission Regulation (EC) No 377/2008.

([3])    EU Labour Force Survey Explanatory Notes. 

([4])    Commission Regulation (EC) No 1897/2000.

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Every year, a certain number of changes are introduced in some national LFSs, to take into account changes introduced at European level, to better align the national surveys to the already existing EU regulations or methodological guidelines, or to take into consideration national needs. These changes can concern the conceptual level (i.e. concepts and definitions used by the LFS, the survey coverage and the geographical boundaries, the target population, the legislation, the classifications used) or the measurement level (i.e. the sampling strategy, the data collection, and the weighting scheme).

For a summary of the reported changes by the countries, please consult: Quality report of the European Union Labour Force Survey 2018 (chapter 6.3).

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For a summary of the coherence with population statistics, please consult: Quality report of the European Union Labour Force Survey 2018 (chapter 7.2). 

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For a summary of the coherence with National Accounts, please consult: Quality report of the European Union Labour Force Survey 2018 (chapter 7.3).

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Accessibility and clarity refer to the simplicity and ease, the conditions and modalities by which users can access, use and interpret statistics, with the appropriate supporting information and assistance.

The Eurostat public website is free of charge and includes main indicators, derived from the Labour Force Survey, as well as detailed, constantly updated main results from the EU-LFS. All data on the website are supplemented by meta-data in Euro SDMX Metadata Structure (ESMS), giving basic information on the background and a summary of the methodology.

Eurostat also produces tailor-made tables not available online at the request of users (please refer to http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/help/support). More than 1,300 user request are processed every year

by Eurostat concerning LFS data.

Since 2011 researchers can get anonymised datasets containing microdata free of charge if certain conditions are fulfilled. Data from all Member States and from Iceland, Norway and Switzerland are available in this format. In 2018 around 300 researchers or research groups worked with EU-LFS microdata (new contracts and amendments).

More detailed information regarding the below mentioned elements can be found at the dedicated EU-LFS web page  and at the EU-LFS (Statistics Explained).

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See country reports.

See country reports.

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See country reports.

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See country reports.

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No comparable information available.

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Regarding confidentiality restriction, Eurostat does not disseminate EU-LFS estimates based on 3 or less reporting units. As an indicative rule of thumb, each reporting unit represents on average, over the whole set of EU-LFS participating countries, around 330 persons from the population (as the average quarterly sampling rate is 0.3%).

This confidentiality restriction is mainly relevant for tailor-made data extractions. In such cases, the user will receive a data file where the cells based on 3 or less reporting units are blanked and flagged 'c'. The values in the cells have been removed but the corresponding entries in the data file are still visible. 

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