State Statistical Office

 Labour Market Department

“Dame Gruev” str, no. 4, 1000 Skopje, North Macedonia

19 June 2025

19 June 2025

19 June 2025

The EU Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS) is the largest European household sample survey. Its main statistical objective is to classify the population of working age (15 years and over) into three mutually exclusive and exhaustive groups: employed persons, unemployed persons, which together represent the ‘labour force’, and the people outside the labour force.

Country can modify or add more information.

The following international classifications are used in Labour Force Survey:

• International Standard Classification of Occupations 2008 (ISCO – 2008);
• Statistical classification of economic activities (NACE, rev.2), which is comparable to UN classification of activities ISIC – rev.4;
• International Standard Classification of Education, ISCED–2011;
• International Classification of Status in Employment (ICSE – 93),
• Classification of Fields of Education (ISCED-F 2013) supplementing the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED – 2011).

Labour Force Survey covers all sections defined by NACE rev. 2.

Pre-filled example:

Individuals living in private households in the Country

Country can modify or add more information.

Excluded are persons in institutional households (students’  homes,  homes  for  children  and young people with developmental disability, homes for socially imperiled children, old / retired people homes, homes for adults with disability, monasteries, nunneries, etc.). For the temporary absent persons (less than 1 year) data are obtained from other family member. Persons absent more than one year are excluded, except in a case when they considerably contribute to the income of the household and do not have other family in the place where they live. For students  who  live  in other town within country, as well as for students who live abroad, data are obtained from original households in the case when they are economically dependent from that household.

15 and more.

The population is classified as employed, unemployed and out of labour force based on the information from the questionnaire concerning the activity of the respondents in the reference week. Data obtained in this way differ from the data on employed and unemployed persons obtained through other statistical researches.

The Survey does not take into account the formal status of the respondent, but her/his employment status is determined based on the activity that is carried out in the reference week. Thus, in addition to the persons who have a formal job, employed persons in this Survey can also be individuals who have no formal employment, but they have performed some work (at least one hour) during the reference week in order to earn for their living.

Employed persons comprise persons aged 15 to 89 who, during the reference week, were in one of the following categories:

• Persons who during the reference week worked for at least one hour for pay or profit, including family workers (unpaid).
• Persons with a job or business who were temporarily not at work during the reference week but had an attachment to their job. The following groups have a job attachment:
  • Persons not at work due to holidays, working time arrangements, sick leave, maternity or paternity leave; persons in job-related training;
  • Persons on parental leave, either receiving and/or being entitled for job-related income or benefits, or whose expected duration of the parental leave is 3 months or less;
  • Seasonal workers during the off-season, where they continue to regularly perform tasks and duties for the job or business, excluding fulfilment of legal or administrative obligations;
  • Persons temporarily not at work for other reasons where the expected duration of the absence is 3 months or less.

• Persons producing agricultural goods whose main part is intended for sale or barter.

Persons in own-use production work, voluntary workers, unpaid trainees and persons involved in other forms of work as defined in the 19th International Conference of Labour Statisticians (ICLS) Resolution concerning statistics of work, employment and labour underutilization, adopted on 11 of October 2013, are not included in employment on the basis of those activities.

Employment rate is the percentage share of employed population in the total population of the same age group.

Formal employment includes:

• Persons who have a formal contract on employment, i.e. an employee-employer relationship for a definite or indefinite time,
• Persons who perform independently an activity in registered ownership or are founders of registered enterprises or entrepreneur’s shops,
• Persons who undertake an agricultural activity registered in official government institutions.

Informal employment involves:

• work in non-registered enterprises,
• work in registered enterprises, but without a formal contract of employment.
• work of unpaid family workers.       

The informal employment rate represents the share of informally employed in total employment.

Unemployed persons comprise persons aged 15 to 74 who were:

• during the reference week not employed according to the definition of employment described in paragraph 1; and
• currently available for work, i.e. were available for paid employment or self-employment before the end of the two weeks following the reference week; and
• actively seeking work, i.e. had either carried out activities in the four week period ending with the reference week to seek paid employment or self-employment or found a job to start within a period of at most three months from the end of the reference week.

Seasonal workers not at work during the reference week (off-season) but who expect to return to their seasonal job are to be considered as "found a job".

The unemployment rate represents the percentage of the unemployed in the total number of active population of the same age group.

The long-term unemployment rate represents the share of the unemployed for more than a year in the labor force (employed and unemployed).

The NEET rate represents the share of persons aged 15-24 (or 15-29) who are not employed, not in education, or in training in the total population of that same age group.

Active population – labour force includes all employed and unemployed persons.

Activity rate is the percentage share of active population in the total population of the same age.

Potential active population includes persons who take active steps to find a job but cannot start working immediately, i.e. within two weeks, as well as persons who can immediately start working but did not take active steps to find a job.

This contingent includes so-called discouraged persons, i.e. persons who do not undertake steps to find a job because they are convinced they cannot find one although they could start working immediately in the case a job was offered.

Persons outside the labour force comprise persons who were in one of the following categories:

(a) Persons aged below 15;

(b) Persons aged above 89;

(c) Persons aged 15 to 89 who were, during the reference week, neither employed nor unemployed according to the definitions of employment and unemployment.

The outside the labor force rate is the percentage of the population outside the labour force in the total population of the same age group.

 Housekeeping

Pre-filled example:

Members regularly living together in the same dwelling sharing income, household expenditures, food and other essentials for living.

Pre-filled example:

Usual residence (12 months).

Sample of observation units constituted by private households or by persons belonging to private households who have their usual residence in that

The statistical population is individual households on the territory of RNM and all persons on aged between 15 and 89. 

Not requested for the LFS quality report.

From 1996 data are obtained and disseminated annually, but from 2004 on a quarterly level.

Not requested for the LFS quality report.

The LFS produces different indicators with different measures:

• Numbers;
• Percentages.

• Quarter
• Year

EU level:

The EU-LFS is based on European legislation since 1973. The principal legal acts, currently in force, are the Regulation (EU) 2019/1700 establishing a common framework for European social statistics, the Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2020/256 establishing a multiannual rolling planning, the Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/2181 regarding items common to several datasets, and the Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/2240 which specifies the implementation rules, technical items and contents of the EU-LFS.

National level:

• Law on State Statistics ("Official Gazette of the Republic of Macedonia" No. 54/1997, 21/2007, 51/2011, 104/2013, 42/2014, 192/2015, 27/16, 83/18, 220/18 and "Official Gazette of the Republic of North Macedonia" No. 31/20)
• Programme of Statistical Surveys 2023-2027 ("Official Gazette of the Republic of North Macedonia" No. 29/23)

Tha data are transmitted (via eDamis) to Eurostat and IMF(via SDDS plus), and microdata sets are sent to United Nations, the IMF, the World Bank, ILO and other users.

EU level:

Regulation (EU) No 557/2013 17 June 2013 as regards access to confidential data for scientific purposes and repealing Commission Regulation (EC) No 831/2002. It implements the Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council on European Statistics, which sets criteria for confidentiality of data.

National level:

• The protection of individual data is regulated by the Law on State Statistics

• The basic principles and activities undertaken to ensure data confidentiality are described in the Policy on Statistical Confidentiality

Pursuant to Article 38 of the Law on State Statistics and the Policy on Statistical Confidentiality, individual data are not published. However, if access is granted to microdata from the relevant survey, then the methods used to prevent data disclosure should be specified.

The date of data publication is determined in the Advance Release Calendar, which is updated quarterly.

In line with the Law on Official Statistics  ("Official Gazette of the Republic of Macedonia" No. 54/1997, 21/2007, 51/2011, 104/2013, 42/2014, 192/2015, 27/16, 83/18, 220/18) and European Statistical Code of Practice, all users are treated equally. LFS data are published on the SSS Website, following which those data are simultaneously availabe to all users. Any deviation from the date set in the release calendar must be announced and explained.

EU level.

European social statistics are provided on the basis of equal treatment of all types of users, such as policy‐ makers, public administrations, researchers, trade unions, students, civil society representatives including non‐ governmental organisations, and citizens, which can access statistics freely and easily through Commission (Eurostat) databases on its website and in its publications.

National release policy: 

All users have equal access to statistics at the same time: this means that the publication dates are announced in advance and no user has access to official statistics before they are published. Statistical data are first published in the "News Releases" edition on the website of the State Statistical Office at 12:00.

First release, quarterly (4x), yearly (1x).

Annual data for 2022 was published on the last working day of April 2023.

Quarterly LF data were published four times in 2023 year (I quarter - June 2023, II quarter -  September 2023, III quarter -  Desember 2023 and IV quarter -  March of 2024).

Data from the Labor Force Survey are published quarterly in a Statistical release and makstat, link in annex. 

Description of the national dissemination format and publications

Links to publications.

The Statistical Office of the Republic of North Macedonia publishes the following publications regarding LFS:

• Statistical release “Labour Force Survey” – quarterly data;
• MAKSTAT database“Labour Force Survey” – quarterly data
• MAKSTAT database“Labour Force Survey” – annual data
• Bulletin “Labour Force Survey in the Republic of North Macedonia” – annual data;
• Data from the Labour Force Survey are also available in the publications “Statistical Yearbook” ,  “Regions of the Republic of North Macedonia, “ “North Macedonia in figures” and “Makstat Selection”

The publications can be accessed through the link given in annex.

Online database is available at the link in the annex.

Not requested for the LFS quality report.

Link for national referent metadata is given in annex.

Aggregated data available to public, microdata available to researchers.

Questionnaire, methodological explanations 

Further assistance available via phone or email

The use of microdata by external users is possible only for research purposes and is done in accordance with the Law on State Statistics. Access to anonymized microdata is defined by an internal procedure of the State Statistical Office.

Y

Researchers and some international orgnaizations.

Microdata in SAS format are available on special request with written contract.

The use of microdata by external users is possible only for research purposes and is done in accordance with the Law on State Statistics (Article 41, Article 42 and Article 43). Access to anonymised microdata is defined by an internal procedure of the State Statistical Office "Access to anonymised microdata for scientific research purposes"

Each variable in database contains label and value with belonging description.

Y

Not requested for the LFS quality report.

Not requested for the LFS quality report.

See below.

Not requested for the LFS quality report.

Detailed methodology is available on the following links:

Links to Quality documentation.

Not requested for the LFS quality report.

Not requested for the LFS quality report.

The Labour Force Survey is carried out in every European country as well as in many other countries around the world following common concepts and guidelines. This makes the Labour Force Survey the most adequate Macedonian survey for international comparisons on labour market statistics.

The Labour Force Survey is used for monitoring the labour market.

The data that are most frequently asked and not available from other sources are those on:

• unemployment;
• formal/informal employment;
• characteristics of the main and additional job, such as hours of work, overtime, absence from work, reasons for absence from work, methods for seeking employment, reasons for not seeking employment, reasons for work on permanent or temporary base, reasons for part-time work, etc.

LFS data are used by national and international users.

National users are the Government organisations of the Republic of North Macedonia such as: the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, Ministry of Science and Technology, Ministry of Youth and Sports, National Bank, National Employment Service, local authorities, etc. Other national users are various academic and research institutions (universities and institutes), enterprises, journalists and individual users such as students, scientists, researchers and others.

Also, LFS data are used  for compiling detailed regional indicators, for estimates on current education and educational attainment, for human resources in science and technology, and for accurate estimates of labour input of National Accounts.

Several indicators stemming from the LFS are used for monitoring and measurement of core policy objectives (of the EU), for example in the context of the European Pillar of Social Rights, the Sustainable Development Goals and the Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure.

The international users are: Eurostat (for main LFS indicators), UNESCO and UNICEF (for educational data), ILO (for employment and unemployment), World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF)  SDDS plus and others. Some countries from the region need LFS data for various regional projects.

Not requested for the LFS quality report.

LFS complies with Regulation (EU) 2019/1700 of the European Parliament and Council, making the data complete.

Not requested for the LFS quality report.

Data are collected at NUT3 level.

At quarterly level data are disseminated at NUTS 1 level.

Only basic rates are published at NUTS3 level at annual level.

NUTS3 level (level of region).

NUTS3 level for basic rates (rate of activity, employment, unemployment and outside of the labor force population) is published at annual level.

NUTS1 level

Not requested for the LFS quality report.

Sampling errors are a measure of the variability between the estimates from all possible samples. The extent of variability is not known exactly, but can be estimated statistically from the survey data.

In the dissemination phase, it is not possible to publish each estimate with its sampling error. In order to allow users to use sampling errors (for selected data) when doing analyses, approximate values of sampling errors  have been calculated based on regression model.

Tables with approximate values of sampling errors for totals and means, method of using said tables and calculation of the CVs for rates and changes are given in the annex.

Sampling error indicator are following: Coefficient of variation (CV), Standard Error (SE) and Confidence Interval (CI).

References to Annex File.

References to Annex File.

Coefficient of variation for the number of employed persons (aged 15-74) and the employment rate (aged 15-74) are identical. Since the denominator of the employment rate is the total population and for this particular age group (individuals aged 15-74) it is one of the population totals used in the calibration procedure. Thus the only source of sampling variability is the numerator.

Data entry application designed and developed by external Agency and SSO

Standard errors, coefficients of variation and confidence intervals for parameters are calculated in  SAS. This softvare is able to compute estimates and errors for any complex estimator, which can be expressed as a differentiable function of Horvitz-Thompson or calibration estimators.

Not requested for the LFS quality report.

References to Annex File.

See in the 13.3.1. Coverage error section in Annex.

Not requested for the LFS quality report.

See in the 13.3.1. Coverage error section in Annex.

References to Annex File.

 See below.

References to Annex File.

References to Annex File.

Not requested for the LFS quality report.

See below.

References to Annex File.

References to Annex File.

References to Annex File.

References to Annex File.

Item non rate in North Macedonia LFS reffers only to the variable - INCGROSS.

References to Annex File.

References to Annex File.

References to Annex File.

Data can be modified and edited in the course of the survey/interview. If an interviewer wants to modify the initial respondent’s answer when she/he sees there has been an error, she/he can do it on site. Upon the arrival of data in the head office, additional control is to be done, as well as the coding of occupations, economic activities and fields of education. Editing and processing phases refer to detecting logically incompatible information, as well as to their modification. In data entry application is built in logical control (during the interviewing), thus disabling the interviewer to enter illogical data and as such limiting such cases to the minimum. Logical control is constantly updating during the work connecting with data checking.

There are no available estimates on the number of processing errors in the LFS.

References to Annex File.

References to Annex File.

Not requested for the LFS quality report.

References to Annex File.

Not requested for the LFS quality report.

Not requested for the LFS quality report.

All data are published according to the release calendar.

Not requested for the LFS quality report.

The data are comparable on the level of regions and districts.

All definitions and procedures are laid down by the European Union, which makes the Survey suitable for both overall and very specific international comparisons of labour market issues.

Not requested for the LFS quality report.

Since 1996, the Labour force survey (also referred to as LFS, EU-LFS or MK-LFS) has been conducted in North Macedonia as one of the most valuable sources of information regarding the events in the labour market.

Until 2004, the Labour Force Survey was an annual survey. However, in 2004 it became a quarterly survey considered as the most comprehensive survey of the economic activity of the population and its demographic, educational and other characteristics during the inter-census period. Throughout the years, the Labour Force Survey has been conducted according to the methodological recommendations of the International Labour Organization (ILO) ratified on the 13th International Conference of Labour Statisticians and the recommendations of the Statistical Office of the European Union (EUROSTAT). To improve the quality of the survey, the new regulations and recommendations from Eurostat and ILO were implemented with the help of the IPA financial and expert’s support. Repeatedly IPA financial and expert’s support were included in the period of IPA 2012 till IPA 2015. The support significantly increased the efficiency of obtaining, processing, and disseminating the LFS data. Two interviewing methods, namely CAPI (Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing) and CATI (Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviewing) were used in combination. However, the implementation faced several difficulties that had a significant impact on the continuous operation of the LFS. The three main challenges were the COVID-19 crisis, Census 2021, and the implementation of the IESS regulation.

In 2017, an application-based solution was developed for conducting the LFS. However, subsequent changes, including new recommendations from the EU posed difficulties in incorporating and updating the new questionnaire format.

In 2021, the Statistical Office (SSO) began the process of updating the applicative solution for the LFS. This update aimed to incorporate the necessary changes, including the new form of the questionnaire based on the Regulation (EU) 2019/1700 (IESS Regulation) and Regulation (EU) 2019/2240.

The finalization of the updated applicative solution took place in January 2023. Subsequently, in the first quarter of 2023, the updated application was utilized for conducting interviews in both CAPI and CATI modes.

 The main methodological change refers to the exclusion of persons who produce goods and services for their own use from the category of employed population and their subsequent classification into the category of unemployed or population outside the labor force.

Data collected from 2004 to 2020 are mutually comparable.  However, since 2021, due to changes in main concepts in the LFS the comparability with previous years has been lost.

In accordance with the published results of the Population, Households and Dwellings Census of the Republic of North Macedonia 2021, the State Statistical Office revised the data from the Labor Force Survey for the period 2017-2021.

The data were adjusted according to the new census results, by gender, five-year age groups and statistical regions. 

North Macedonia has not yet conducted an analysis of the implementation of the new framework regulation (IESS). It is currently underway.

Not requested for the LFS quality report.

Not requested for the LFS quality report.

References to Annex File.

References to Annex File.

Not requested for the LFS quality report.

Not requested for the LFS quality report.

References to Annex File.

Not requested for the LFS quality report.

Cost and burder refers to the number of staff involved in the LFS and on the duration of the interview by Final Sampling Unit.

Not requested for the LFS quality report.

The average duration of the LFS interview is about 10 minutes per person and the average time spent in the household is about 20 minutes. 

The general revision policy of the Statistical Office of the Republic of North Macedonia represents a global framework allowing that every statistical domain defines its own revision policy in accordance with its specific features. 

 The general SSO revision policy establishes:

• general rules of revision of published data, 
• forms of information of users as to possible revision causes, 
• categorization of revisions, and
• documentation covering all revision aspects.

The general revision policy is available on the link in annex.

Y

Y

Not requested for the LFS quality report.

Not requested for the LFS quality report.

The Labour Force Survey is the most comprehensive continuous research in North MAcedonia. Since 2004, when there was the change in periodicity, interviews have been conducted every week (from Monday to Sunday), where in one week only one subsample is interviewed, and in the following one another subsample, and so on. The respondents provide answers about their employment activity in the week which is the reference week for them.

References to Annex File.

References to Annex File.

Not requested for the LFS quality report.

References to Annex File.

References to Annex File.

INCGROSS is collected through CAPI of CATI interview. 

In the case of the non respons  imputation is done based on TAX register or LFS data.

Reference period for data collection of INCGROSS variable is the whole year.

References to Annex File.

Member States shall transmit to the Commission (Eurostat) quarterly and annual datasets with pre-checked microdata that comply with validation rules according to the specification of variables for their coding and filter conditions set out in Annex I of the Regulation 2019/2240. Member States and the Commission shall agree on additional validation rules that shall be fulfilled as a condition for transmitted data to be accepted.

Pre-filled example:

Arithmetic and qualitative controls are used in the validation process, including comparison with other data. Before data dissemination, the internal coherence of the data is checked.

Not requested for the LFS quality report.

References to Annex File.

References to Annex File.

Not requested for the LFS quality report.