Employment Methodological aspects of the microcensus 2017 – Labour market

Since the reference year 2017, the microcensus results concerning the labour market have no longer included people in collective living quarters (e.g. old people’s or care homes and homes for disabled people, refugee accommodation, prisons, etc.). The data refer only to the population in households at the main residence.

The background is an amendment to the Microcensus Act of 7 December 2016. Reporting has been clearly limited regarding people in collective living quarters. The questionnaire has been reduced to cover only selected variables such as sex, age and marital status. The objective is to reduce the burden on both respondents and interviewers. In addition, it was difficult in the past to collect complete data in these living quarters.

Roughly 1.2 million people lived in collective living quarters in the reference year 2017 (2016: 1.0 million). The majority of them, who lived in old people’s or care homes, were not available to the labour market. The new population definition has an impact on time series comparisons and must be taken into account when interpreting the data. A general recalculation of microcensus data of previous periods is not intended.

For purposes of comparison, the following table also shows selected population and labour force participation data, including and excluding collective living quarters, for the reference year 2016.