Information on data

Short-term statistics (STS) are available for the EU, the euro area, and the EU countries. Depending on the indicator, some data for non-EU countries are also available.

Eurostat compiles aggregates for the EU and the euro area, taking into account the relative size of the industries and countries. These are based on the STS indicators which are submitted by the national statistical institutes (NSI) of the EU countries.

Occasionally, data are subject to confidentiality rules, in line with EU regulation 223/2009. The NSIs also transmit these data to Eurostat, and they are used in the calculation of the aggregates. However, the confidential data are not published.

STS covers 4 major economic activities as defined by the statistical classification of economic activities in the European Community (NACE):

Please note that financial and public services are not included.

The following table provides an overview of the indicators available for each economic activity.

STS also include quarterly indicators on business registrations and bankruptcies. These indicators have a wider scope than the other STS indicators. They cover industry, construction, and market services. However, they exclude public services, social security, and membership organisations.

STS indicators are published as indices, which show the change of the indicator compared with a fixed reference year, and as growth rates. They are not available in absolute values. The only exception are data on building permits. As of March 2024, STS indicators are published with the base year 2021.

To construct these indices, economic data for different industries are weighted according to their relative importance. For the compilation of European aggregates, country data are weighted according to the relative size of a country in the EU or euro area.

These weights are updated every 5 years or whenever new EU members are added to the composition of the EU or euro area aggregates.

EU members' price indices are calculated on the basis of the prices of products or services in their national currency. For countries which have not adopted the euro, price indices are expressed in national currency terms.

Data are published in the Eurostat database between 30 and 90 days after the end of the reference period. For the exact dates, please consult our  detailed STS release calendar for 2024. 

For the most important indicators, Eurostat publishes a Euro indicator. The release dates are announced in the Euro indicators release calendar.

STS are derived from surveys of businesses conducted by the national statistical institutes (NSIs) in the EU countries. In addition, administrative data, such as tax data, or other data sources, including energy consumption data, are also used.

Details on the data transmission of STS to Eurostat, including coverage, are defined in regulations.

Published data may be subject to revisions. Such revisions may be caused by several factors:

• additional information
• methodological changes
• changes in the base year
• corrections of errors
• re-estimation of the seasonal adjustment coefficients.

The revision policy of Eurostat for STS follows the general guidelines on revision policy approved by the European Statistical System Committee (ESSC):

• In general, European aggregates are only released and revised once each month. This policy is applied to all Principal European economic indicators (PEEIs) as well as the retail trade turnover indicator.
• Continuous revisions are applied for all STS labour input indicators (numbers of persons employed, hours worked, gross wages, and salaries), construction costs, construction prices, and industrial turnover.
• National data are revised in the database when new information becomes available. Eurostat processes and publishes revised national data within 24 hours after they have been received.

The revision policy of the NSIs in the EU countries differs. Some revise their data for the last ‘x’ months, while others do not revise the data and consider them final once they have been published. The national data revision policies may also vary from one indicator to another.

For further details, please consult our article on  revisions of STS.

Eurostat publishes data that are calendar adjusted and seasonally adjusted, in addition to unadjusted data.

Calendar adjustment increases the comparability of monthly data by removing effects that are due to different number of holiday days and weekends in different months. Seasonal adjustment removes effects of regular seasonal influences, cause for example by Christmas shopping.

Data that are seasonally-adjusted are also calendar-adjusted, but not the other way around. Eurostat calculates the adjustment only if nationally adjusted data are not available. Eurostat also calculates adjusted series for the EU and the euro area.

For more information, please consult our article on  Short-term business statistics – seasonal adjustment methods.

STS indicators are tools for formulating and monitoring the economic and monetary policy of the EU and the euro area.

STS data are used for economic analysis by the European Commission, the European Central Bank (ECB), national governments, central banks, companies, and financial markets. STS indicators are also used with other economic datasets, such as national accounts (for example, gross domestic product).