Statistical office of Montenegro - MONSTAT

Department of Labour market statistics

IV Proleterske 2, 81 000 Podgorica, Montenegro

The Labour Force Survey (LFS) is the most comprehensive survey on labour market characteristics conducted on a sample of households in Montenegro. The Survey is conducted once a year, and the period of record was in October. The Labour Force Survey 2007 was conducted on the basis of questionnaires which were prepared and harmonized with EUROSTAT’s requirements through the assistance provided by CARDS project “Labour Market Reform and Workforce Development”. In defining the primary contingents, international recommendations and definitions were used (the published guidelines and definitions of the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the requirements of EUROSTAT), so that information received through this survey present the most important source of data in labour statistics which are by its contents and methodology comparable with the similar data of other countries.

Survey is carried out continuously with quarterly data processing from 2008. 

Total number of households in the sample is 10 920 annually and the overall sample size per quarter is approximately 2 730 households.

The definitions used in the EU-LFS follow the Resolution of the 13th International Conference of Labour Statisticians, convened in 1982 by the International Labour Organisation. To further improve comparability within the EU, while remaining fully compatible with the ILO guidelines, Regulation 1897/2000, gives a more precise definition of unemployment.

The LFS covers persons in private households. While demographic data are gathered for all age groups, questions relating to labour market status are restricted to persons in the age group of 15 years or older. 

Data can be provide respectively for those aged 15-74, 15-64, 15-24,15 and more etc.

Legal basis: Legal basis for implementation of the LFS is the Law on statistics and statistical system of Montenegro (”MNE Official gazette”, No. 18/12 and 47/1):

Law on Official Statistics and Official Statistical System (Official Gazette of Montenegro 18/12, 30 March 2012)

Implementation of the LFS in Montenegro also relies on the following EU regulations: 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, methods and the decision making processes of the EU-LFS. 

Reference week: 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.

Periodicity of the results: We produce a quarterly and annually estimates.

This data covers area of retail trade and other services.

The LFS results are produced in accordance with the relevant international classification systems. The main classifications used are NACE Rev.1 (NACE Rev.1.1 from 2008) and NACE Rev. 2 (from 2011) for economic activity, ISCO 88 (COM) and ISCO 08 (from 2011) for occupation and ISCED 1997 and ISCED 2011 (from 2014) for the level and field of education.

Retail trade and Other services.

The definitions of the presented indicators can be summarised as follows:

Number of hours actually/usually worked in the main /second job during the reference week

The number of hours actually/usually worked during the reference week includes all hours including extra hours, either paid or unpaid, but excludes the travel time between home and the place of work as well as the main meal breaks (normally taken at midday). Persons who have also worked at home during the reference period are asked to include the number of hours they have worked at home. Apprentices, trainees and other persons in vocational training are asked to exclude the time spent in school or other special training centres.

Persons and households.

The LFS results cover the total population usually residing in Montenegro, except for persons living in collective or institutional households. While demographic data are gathered for all age groups, questions relating to labour market status are restricted to persons in the age group of 15 years or older. The LFS covers all industries and occupations.

The whole teritory of Montenegro. 

The activities outside the geographical coverage are not included.

Data are available from 2007 onwards for the the annual series. From 2008 quarterly and annual

2015

Index.

The EU-LFS is designed as a continuous quarterly survey with interviews spread uniformly over all weeks of a quarter. The reference week starts on Monday and ends on Sunday. By convention, the first week of the year is the week including the first Thursday, and the 1^st reference quarter consists of 13 consecutive weeks starting from that week. Therefore reference quarter corresponds to the calendar quarter. Built in this way, the quarterly sample is spread uniformly over all weeks of the quarter.

Legal basis: Legal basis for implementation of the LFS is the Law on statistics and statistical system of Montenegro (”MNE Official gazette”, No. 18/12 and 47/1.):

Law on Official Statistics and Official Statistical System (Official Gazette of Montenegro 18/12, 30 March 2012)

Implementation of the LFS in Montenegro also relies on the following EU regulations: The principal legal act is the Council Regulation (EC) No. 577/98. This is the main regulation with provisions on design, survey characteristics and decision making processes.  

Data of hours worked in retail trade were sent to Eurostat first time in March 2017. Data of hours worked in other services were sent to Eurostat first time in 2019.

National legislation

According to the Law on Statistics and Statistical System of Montenegro, Article 54 the data collected, processed and stored for the purpose of official statistics shall be confidential, if it is on the basis of these data, either directly or indirectly identify reporting units which disclosing individual information.    

Law on Official Statistics and Official Statistical System (Official Gazette of Montenegro 18/12, 30 March 2012)

European legislation

Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 on European statistics, of 11 March 2009, on the transmission of data subject to statistical confidentiality to the Statistical Office of the European Communities. 

Confidential data are treated according to policy rules (see point 7.1). Individual data represent an official secret.

The release calendar is publicly available and published at the end of the year for the following year. The LFS main indicators data are released according to a quarterly release calendar. Annual results are released two weeks after the fourth quarter.

http://www.monstat.org/userfiles/file/o%20nama/2020/Kalendar2020_eng.pdf

User access is achieved for LFS via the MONSTAT website.

The frequency of the data are quarterly and annual.

Yearly and quarterly press releases. Data are available on the MONSTAT website and in an Annual press release:

http://www.monstat.org/eng/page.php?id=1615&pageid=22

Data are published in the Statistical Yearbook of Montenegro, Montenegro in numbers and Women and men in Montenegro.

Data are available on-line at MONSTAT website:

http://www.monstat.org/eng/page.php?id=22&pageid=22

Not available.

Not available.

http://www.monstat.org/eng/page.php?id=305&pageid=22

Quality report of this survey is available on the web site: http://www.monstat.org/eng/page.php?id=1425&pageid=1425

Implementation of the LFS in Montenegro also relies on the following EU regulations: The principal legal act is the Council Regulation (EC) No. 577/98. This is the main regulation with provisions on design, survey characteristics and decision making processes.  We continuously work also to improve the quality of the survey on a voluntary basis beyond legal obligations.

We apply high standards with regard to the methodology in LFS. However, the LFS is based upon a sample of the population. The results are therefore subject to the usual types of errors associated with random sampling. Based on the sample size and design, it is implemented basic guidelines intended to avoid publication of figures that are unreliable or to give warning of the unreliability of the figures.

Users of data are: the Ministry of Labour, the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Economy, Eurostat, the European Central Bank, research institutions, national accounts statistics and other sectors inside MONSTAT etc.

Customer satisfaction survey is not yet available at the level of research. All users request was fulfilled and based on that, we have concluded that users are satisfied with our survey. At the level of institutions is available online survey: http://www.monstat.org/eng/anketa.php.

The data obtained in this survey are compliant with the Council Regulation (EC) No. 577/98.

The overall accuracy is considered as high. The LFS covers persons living in private households to ensure a comparable coverage for all countries. The Labour Force Survey is based on a two-stage stratified sample design. Sample frame until 2012 was Census of Population, Households and Dwellings 2003, and from 2012 Census of Population, Households and Dwellings from 2011. Rotation model 2-(2)-1 is applied in the sample of LFS and households are interviewed four times. They are interviewed in two consecutive quarters, left out in the following two quarters and interviewed again in one quarter. Regardless of the sampling method or which age groups are interviewed, the data are representative for the population aged 15-74. As the results are based on a sample of population they are subject to the usual types of errors associated with sampling techniques and interviews.

Subject to Eurostat's quality screening, figures on employment fulfill the Eurostat requirements concerning reliability.

Estimated size of population group below which figures must be                                           

                                                           CV (%)     Size - quarterly    annually

- suppressed                                        30.00             1,500            1,200

- published with a warning                    10.00            2,500          1,900     

Not available.

Not available.

The data are published 75 days after the end of the referent quarter.

Deadlines for publishing have been complied in accordance with the calendar of release.

Comparability across countries is achieved in the LFS through various regulations ensuring harmonisation of concepts, definitions and methodologies. However, perfect comparability among countries is difficult to achieve, even were it to be by means of a single direct survey, i.e. a survey carried out at the same time, using the same questionnaire and a single method of recording.

Comparability of the statistics is ensured for the main characteristics, employment and unemployment where particular definitions and sequence of questions are part of the EU legislation. The degree of comparability of the EU Labour Force Survey results is ensured by: the recording of the same set of characteristics in each country, a close correspondence between the EU list of questions and the national questionnaires, the use of the same definitions for all countries, the use of common classifications (e.g. NACE for economic activity), the data being centrally processed by Eurostat.

Comparable data are published since 2008 on the MONSTAT website > http://www.monstat.org/cg/ 

It is important to mention that the classifications used in coding for economic activity are:

- until 2011 - International Statistical Classification of Economic Activities (NACE rev. 1) and from 2011 - International Statistical Classification of Economic Activities (NACE rev. 2)

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Financial resources required for the implementation of this survey are defined by the budget of Statistical Office of Montenegro. 

Revision Policy prepared by Statistical Office of Montenegro is available on web site: http://monstat.org/userfiles/file/o%20nama/2017/Revision%20policy.pdf 

Significant revisions have only been made to reflect changes in methodology. We update figures all the time in the new press release with the remarks. The biggest revision is happen when we change base year. 

A statistical calendar is published on the website. A link to the MONSTAT website:

http://www.monstat.org/userfiles/file/o%20nama/2020/Kalendar2020_eng.pdf

Routine revisions, related to replacing estimated data with the subsequently reported data, are not carried out, because all data are available according to the deadlines.

If error occurs, corrected data are published in the next issue of First release. Data changed in relation to the first released are disseminated with a comment.

The requiered indicators MR and MAR has not been calculated yet. 

Size of revisions has not been calculated yet. 

The EU-LFS is a rotating random sample survey of persons in private households. Survey is carried out continuously with quarterly data processing from 2008.

Total number of households in the sample is 10 920 annually and the overall sample size per quarter is approximately 2 730 households. The Labour Force Survey is based on a two-stage stratified sample design. Sample frame until 2012 was Census of Population, Households and Dwellings 2003 and from 2012 Census of Population, Households and Dwellings from 2011.

Primary Sampling Unit (PSU) are enumeration areas from Census of Population, Households and Dwellings from 2011. Selection unit and observing unit in the survey is household selected by the sample, and interviewing unit are the members of households. Only private households are included, while collective households are not.

Rotation model 2-(2)-1 is applied in the sample of LFS and households are interviewed four times. They are interviewed in two consecutive quarters, left out in the following two quarters and interviewed again in one quarter.

The LFS is a continuous survey. Since 2008, the survey has quarterly periodicity, previously it was an annual survey. Since the survey became quarterly, it includes both quarterly variables and annual data.

Data are collected by face-to-face interviews, using paper questionnaires. Interviews are done during the week immediately following the reference week. Data are collected with identical questionnaires through the whole year.

In order to improve the quality of data we check that the population coverage and response rates are as required; investigate inconsistencies in the statistics.

Main methods of reducing errors: sending an an advance letter to the household, check-phone call on interviewed households, contact staff working on the field. Validation activities include comparing the statistics with previous cycles, for example comparing the main LFS indicators in current and previous quarter.

Since 2013 the way of calculating LFS annual data: Variables collected every quarter lead to quarterly results which can be averaged through the year, hence producing so-called 'annual average results'.

Currently results are available form Q1/2010 to onward - it is assumed that due to the relatively short time series no significant working day effects were recognised with X-13-ARIMA. Therefore due to the recommendation of Eurostat the working-day adjusted time series are the same as the unadjusted time series.

No notes.