Labour market policy database - Methodology - Revision of June 2006 - Products Manuals and Guidelines

A methodological manual is an essential tool for assisting statisticians in their work, but one should be aware that all manuals should be revised at regular intervals. We have great pleasure in presenting here the LMP Methodology – Revision of June 2006, as an improvement of the first methodology which was published in May 2000. During these years of development, the Labour Market Policy database has moved from a kind of "exploratory" status to maturity. Moreover, since 2005 (ref. year 2004), the LMP data collection is jointly launched by Eurostat and OECD. Both organisations agreed to use the Eurostat methodology, and OECD contributed actively to the revision process. The result is a simplification of the Member States workload as well as an overall improvement in the quality of data for international comparisons. Joint work with the DG of Employment and Social Affairs was maintained throughout this process of development, reflection and revision. As a result, the present version of the LMP methodology takes into account the needs expressed by the Employment Committee for the LMP database to improve its contribution to the monitoring of the European Employment Strategy. The LMP Methodology provides guidelines for the collection of data on public expenditure on Labour Market Policy (LMP) measures and numbers of participants in these measures (stocks, entrants and exits). The scope covers measures targeted to people who are unemployed; people in employment but in risk of involuntary job-loss, and inactive persons who are currently not part of the labour force, but who would like to enter the labour market. The LMP Methodology classifies labour market policy measures in two ways: by type of action and by type of expenditure. The type of action refers to the way in which the measure acts to achieve its objectives (e.g. training measures or employment incentives). The type of expenditure indicates how the payment is made and who the main recipient is.