European harmonised Labour Market Areas — Methodology on functional geographies with potential — 2020 edition - Products Statistical working papers

The Labour Market Area (LMA) is already a well-established and widely discussed concept in regional geography and statistics. This interesting concept, essential for the creating of typologies modelling real life situations, has been intensively studied in the Eurostat’s Working Group on Regional, Urban and Rural Development Statistics, both in two dedicated Task Forces (on harmonised LMAs in 2014/2015 and on LMAs at the European scale in 2018/2019) and as a subject of EU grants in 2016/2017. A number of workshops have been organised with the participation of National Statistical Institutes and the scientific community to discuss and solve methodological and IT issues, to develop guidelines on delineation of Labour Market Areas and to exchange knowledge. The aim of this Statistical Working Paper is to demonstrate the wealth of knowledge and experience gained during the period 2014-2019 and to summarise the results of the work done on the LMAs, thus defining a basis for further statistical and methodological research and for application of the concept to national and EU territorial policies. The paper tells the story of the evolution of the concept of LMAs during the joint work of Eurostat and the National Statistical Authorities. The contents is focused on key LMA related topics such as legal and policy framework for LMAs, methodology, challenges, use cases, link to other territorial classifications and functional geographies. The paper also builds up on the information on methodological activities in the field of the LMAs presented in 2018 at two international conferences co-organised by Eurostat: Quality in Official Statistics held in Krakow and the Conference of European Statistics Stakeholders held in Bamberg.