Persons in employment in national accounts
What does the indicator describe?
As part of national accounts of the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), employment accounts continuously provide monthly, quarterly and annual data on the employment trend in Germany. The conceptual and definitional requirements to be met by national accounts, and by the employment accounts that are integrated in national accounts, are laid down in a binding manner in the European System of National and Regional Accounts (ESA).
According to the ESA, persons in employment as used in national accounts include all persons who perform a gainful activity as employees (wage earners, salaried employees, public officials, marginally employed persons, soldiers), as self-employed persons or as family workers or who have an employment contract under private or public law. People are classified as persons in employment irrespective of the hours worked or to be worked according to their employment contract. Also, it is irrelevant whether the employment is the person’s main source of livelihood. Persons performing several jobs at the same time are covered only once, that is with their main job (person-related concept). The ESA definition of employment is in line with the standards set by the International Labour Organization for the production of internationally comparable labour market statistics. Consequently, the results of the employment calculations are not only a major component of national accounts but also – and this is true especially of the monthly employment figures – a central indicator of the continuous national and internationally comparative labour market monitoring of the Federal Statistical Office; they are part of the dissemination standard indicators of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
In national accounts, the quarterly and annual average employment figures are used as separate values and reference values, for example, to calculate labour productivities and average earnings.
Depending on what the figures are used for, the number of persons in employment, for Germany as a whole and in a breakdown by status in occupation, are presented according to the national concept (place-of-residence concept) or the domestic concept (place-of-work concept). To change over from the national concept to the domestic concept, non-residents working in Germany are added and residents working abroad are subtracted. In national accounts, the quarterly and annual employment figures by economic branch are always shown according to the domestic concept.
How is the indicator calculated?
To meet the requirements of both labour market statistics – that is, the provision of up-to-date monthly employment data – and quarterly and annual national accounts, employment accounts have been designed as a multi-stage structure. The first stage contains first provisional estimations for the overall economy regarding the reference month that has just ended. Those estimations are performed separately for various groups of persons in employment: employees subject to full social insurance contributions, persons in marginal and short-term employment, persons in job opportunities, public officials, soldiers, persons performing compulsory military or alternative or community service, self-employed and family workers. Any other monthly, quarterly and annual results of employment accounts are based on a detailed calculation by industry for every group of persons in employment.
For the calculations at the different stages, currently about 60 sets of statistics obtained through various reporting channels are evaluated. Most of them are specialised official statistics on sub-sectors of the economy (agriculture, forestry and fishing, industry, services) or branch-specific information (such as on post/telecommunication, railways or banking), for which enterprises and their local units provide employment data on a monthly, quarterly or annual basis. The continuous data reports from the private sector are supplemented by annual personnel data of public employers (personnel statistics), the monthly reports of the Federal Ministry of Defence on the number of staff of the Federal Armed Forces and the data on the number of persons doing compulsory alternative or community service. Major cross-industry data bases are the employment statistics of the Federal Employment Agency based on the procedure of reporting data to the social insurance institutions, the business register of official statistics, the quarterly earnings surveys and the microcensus with the integrated labour force survey.
As part of the calculations, the data bases of employment statistics are continuously subjected to consistency checks. In addition, within the system of national accounts, the results of the calculations are co-ordinated with the results of other sub-systems, in particular the calculations according to the production approach and the income approach.
When is the indicator released?
As part of labour market reporting for Germany, about 30 days after the end of the reference month, the Federal Statistical Office publishes in a press release the monthly employment data for the overall economy according to the national concept as unadjusted figures and seasonally adjusted figures together with the unemployment data and unemployment rates from the labour force survey. The monthly employment data as defined by the domestic concept are also available at that early point in time. A first quarterly employment figure for the overall economy is available when the third monthly result of any quarter is released, that is, again after about 30 days. Quarterly results in a breakdown according to the Classification of Economic Activities, 2008 edition (WZ 2008) for self-employed including family workers and employees by ten groups of economic sections plus manufacturing are regularly released 45 to 50 days after the end of the quarter at the latest. In the first calendar week of any year, the Federal Statistical Office also releases a first provisional employment estimate for the reference year that has just ended. The annual average employment results are for the first time published in the most detailed economic breakdown – currently by 64 industries of the WZ 2008 – 20 months after the end of the reference year.
The detailed employment data from national accounts are available free of charge in the tables Arbeitsmarkt, Erwerbstätige aus der Erwerbstätigenrechnung (code 13321) and Volkswirtschaftliche Gesamtrechnungen des Bundes (code 81000) from the GENESIS-Online database.
The press releases and the detailed release calendar are available on the website of the Federal Statistical Office.
How accurate is the indicator?
Through the early first release of employment data, the Federal Statistical Office meets the user need for up-to-date and timely results. In particular the first monthly estimates published 30 days after the end of the reference month refer to a data basis that is still incomplete at that point in time. Therefore the results are continuously adjusted to the current state of information. This takes account of the fact that the basic data required for employment accounts of national accounts become available only successively and some of the results available in the short term have to be corrected later when the data received are getting more complete. So the completeness and reliability of the basic data and, consequently, the accuracy of the calculations improve with the time elapsing after the reference period. In a multi-annual comparison, the first provisional employment data may differ upwards or downwards by an average 0.3 percent from the results that are published later and are based on a then complete data basis. For some monthly results, or for results by status in occupation, the average need for revision may be larger. In addition to the regular revisions that may be performed for any calculation date, major revisions are performed in national accounts every five to ten years, for instance, to change over to new concepts, definitions and classifications based on ESA provisions in national accounts and the integrated employment accounts or to implement new calculation methods. The main purpose of the latest national accounts revision performed in 2011 was to change over the German national accounts to the Classification of Economic Activities, 2008 edition (WZ 2008), which corresponds to the NACE Revision 2 at the European level. Also – as is the case in every major revision – the previous calculations and data bases were checked and new information was included.
According to the results of the 2011 revision of national accounts, the number of persons in employment in Germany in the revision period from 1991 was an average 0.4 percent higher than previously shown. When put in relation to the year-on-year rates of change of the employment data for the overall economy, the mean absolute revision was 0.1 percentage points compared with the pre-revision status.
Please also note in this context the information on changing employment accounts over to the Classification of Economic Activities, 2008 edition (WZ 2008) as part of the revision of national accounts (2011 revision of national accounts).
Further information
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