Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union.

F3: Labour Market and Lefelong Learning

2920 Luxembourg LUXEMBOURG

For more details on classifications, levels of aggregation and transition rules, please consult EU-LFS (Statistics Explained) - Methodology.

Not applicable.

Persons.

The EU LFS results cover the total population usually residing in Member States, 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. For more details and exceptions, please consult please consult the EU-LFS (Statistics Explained) - Methodology.

European Union, Euro area, EU Member States, Candidate Countries, EFTA Countries (except for Liechtenstein).

Data for Cyprus refer only to the areas of Cyprus controlled by the Government of the Republic of Cyprus.

Data for France include the overseas departments (DOM). 

Data for USA and Japan are also disseminated.

Available data ranges differ by Member State. Earliest data series available for unemployment rates and averages are by month start from 1983 onwards.

Not applicable. 

Unemployment rates are expressed in percentage (see definition above in section 3.4), while unemployment levels are thousands of persons.

The reference periods are the calendar months. 

The EU-LFS implementation is governed by legislative acts of the Council and Parliament, as well as of the Commission. The principal legal act is the Regulation (EU) 2019/1700. The implementation rules are specified in the successive Commission regulations, in particular Commission Implementing Regulation 2019/2241. For more details on the regulations, please consult EU-LFS (Statistics Explained) - Main features and legal basis.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Monthly unemployment data is bound by a release calendar.

For monthly unemployment data - the precise date of data release is disseminated on Eurostat's website.

Please also consult the yearly calendar under Euro indicators - Eurostat (europa.eu)

In line with the Community legal framework and the European Statistics Code of Practice Eurostat disseminates European statistics on Eurostat's website (see item 10 - 'Accessibility and clarity') respecting professional independence and in an objective, professional and transparent manner in which all users are treated equitably. The detailed arrangements are governed by the Eurostat protocol on impartial access to Eurostat data for users.

In line with this protocol and on a strictly regulated basis, data on monthly unemployment are sent for information to the European Central Bank (ECB) and to the European Commission Directorate General for Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities (DG EMPL) under embargo the evening before official release of data.

Monthly.

News releases on-line (only for monthly unemployment).

Monthly news release. Dedicated page on Unemployment Statistics in "Statistics Explained".

Please consult free data on-line https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/data/database

Not applicable.

See: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat

The EU-LFS disseminates publications on the methodology of the survey. For more information please consult: Quality reports and methodological publications.

See section 11.1.

Please refer to the ESMS page on 'Employment and unemployment (LFS)' (see link below in section 'related metadata').

Please refer to the ESMS page on 'Employment and unemployment (LFS)' (see link below in section 'related metadata').

Relevance is high. Unemployment rates are among the most important socio-economic indicators. Monthly unemployment rates are Eurostat Euro-indicators; 

Overall, users are satisfied with the quality of the monthly unemployment statistics disseminated in Eurostat’s website. This is true for all the assessed quality dimensions with no exception. Accessibility and accuracy are the most highly rated quality dimensions, with accuracy being the most important dimension according to users. 

The time series are complete from the moment they start.

The overall accuracy is considered as high. Unemployment is arguably the most important variable collected by EU-LFS, the survey design is optimized to measure unemployment.

Not available on monthly basis.

Not available on monthly basis.

Monthly data on seasonally adjusted unemployment rates are published approximately 31 days after the end of the reference month. 

Not available.

For France, the LFS results for the monthly calculations are complemented with the DOM data (départements d'outre-mer).

In the monthly dataset, the idea is to keep the time series as comparable in time as possible. It means that possible breaks in the LFS series due to changes in the definitions or in the filtering of the micro data have been adjusted.

Often questions are asked concerning coherence with registered unemployment. Both indicators are not comparable. First they have different definitions, registration rules are not harmonised internationally and they do not correspond to ILO standards. There could be other reasons for differences: different geographical coverage (e.g. regions excluded), different time coverage, etc.

The headline figures published in the monthly Unemployment News Release are seasonally adjusted unemployment rates. The non-seasonally adjusted monthly data are consistent with the published LFS data.

Not available.

To further specify the general Eurostat revision policy, the following revision policy has been established for the monthly unemployment rate.

All reported errors (once validated) result in corrections of the disseminated data.

Reported errors are corrected in the disseminated data as soon as the correct data have been validated.

Data are only published once they are deemed to be sufficiently complete for all data providers contributing to the aggregate.

1. Routine revisions

Whenever new data are provided and validated, the already disseminated data are updated. Aggregates and components are revised at the same time.

There are routine revisions aiming at adjusting monthly time series to have temporal consistency with the quarterly series.

Every month new not seasonally adjusted figures are added into the process and new estimates are calculated. This might cause a slight revision in the past figures due to the re-execution of the seasonal adjustment procedure. 

Seasonal Adjustment models are updated annually. During the years 2020 and 2021, the seasonal coefficients of the months of the year 2019 have been applied due uncertainties in the seasonal figure caused by the Corona crisis. With the January 2023 data release the annual review of models is re-established, using JDemetra+. After each annual review, routine revisions may appear to seasonally adjusted data.

Whenever new EU-LFS data become available, a potentially larger revision takes place. For countries using registered unemployment counts, data are usually revised for the last 1 to 6 months, upon inclusion of the new LFS data. In addition, for those countries parameters used in the ARIMA models are reviewed every time new EU-LFS quarterly data becomes available. Data are considered to be final after 6 months for routine revisions.

The revision calendar for the domain is identical with the dissemination calendar of the monthly unemployment release.
Routine revisions are communicated in the paragraph “Revisions and timetable” of the monthly news release.

2. Major revisions

The impact of major revisions is analysed visually. Time series breaks caused by major revisions are flagged until break-free data is provided.

Major revisions are documented below (overview of significant revisions of back data published since October 2023):

Sweden: data revised back to January 2001 due to methodological changes in the Framework Regulation, published on 20 October 2023.

Croatia: data revised for all months of 2022 due to Census 2021 revisions, published on 3 November 2023.

Ireland: data revised from July 2016 to September 2023 due to Census 2021 revisions, published on 1 March 2024.

Malta: data revised from January 2018 to January 2024 due to Census 2021 revisions, published on 3 April 2024.

Major revisions are communicated via email to the main users such as the EC DG Employment, the ECB and the OECD.

3. Unscheduled revisions

Lithuania: NSA, SA and Trend series revised for the period October - December 2021 as well as the period October - December 2022 (for the breakdowns Employed Male aged 25-74 as well as Unemployed Male aged 25-74) due to an error in the benchmarking.

Lithuania: NSA, SA, Trend series revised for the period July - September 2023 for all breakdowns due to an error in data restrictions.

Both revisions for Lithuania were published on 1 March 2024.

A link to the most recent news release can be found at the bottom of the page "Unemployment Statistics" in Statistics Explained, section Publications.

For information on EU-LFS data revisions, please consult EU-LFS (Statistics Explained) - Data and publication. 

The EU-LFS is the main data source of the monthly unemployment data. A complete overview of the data sources used, by country, could be found in the paper 'Sources and Methods' available as annex to this metadata.

There are legislative acts of the European Council and Parliament and of the European Commission that govern the EU-LFS (see section 6 ‘Institutional Mandate’ as well as the related metadata "employ_esms" at the bottom of the page) and result in the production of monthly and quarterly  - or only quarterly - labour force statistics.

For the countries where only quarterly statistics is compiled, Eurostat is complementing this quarterly data with a monthly indicator from public employment authority delivered by the Member States. The results of the complementary calculations yield the monthly unemployment data. See annex 'Technical details unemployment calculations' below in this metadata.

The data for US and Japan are produced by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications Government of Japan, respectively. Eurostat disseminates those data without any processing.For additional information please refer to the technical annex below or consult the EU-LFS (Statistics Explained) webpage.

Monthly.

EU-LFS data are acquired by interviewing the sampled individuals directly. 

For more information please consult the overview of the data sources used, that could be found in the paper 'Sources and Methods' available as annex to this metadata. the corresponding LFS quality reports.

Most Member States transmit the data via Edamis, while some just send them via email to the monthly unemployment functional mailbox. The files sent via Edamis are automatically stored in a specific folder on the Fame server, while those sent via email are manually copied in the same folder. All files are then treated exactly in the same way.

Eurostat performs the seasonal adjustment (SA) for countries delivering monthly unemployment inputs (such as administrative unemployment counts) as detailed in Article 3 of Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/2241. 

For the rest of the countries, delivering monthly unemployment statistics or estimates, the SA data is delivered together with the NSA series.

Where available, LFS series adjusted for breaks are used in the production for the monthly unemployment series.

Seasonal adjustment is done by Eurostat for Member States delivering monthly unemployment inputs only, on a disaggregated level (country by gender by age group, indirect approach) using TRAMO/SEATS (and X-13 trend calculation for Germany).

For more information on the transition to a quarterly continuous survey, see EU-LFS (Statistics Explained) webpage: Development and history.

See annexes.