What does the indicator describe?
The Employment Accounts, as integrated part of the System of National Accounts (SNA) at the Federal Statistical Office, continuously provides monthly, quarterly and yearly data on the employment trend in Germany. The European System of Accounts (ESA) specifies the concepts and definitions to be applied in National Accounts and the integrated Employment Accounts.
According to ESA, employment covers all persons – both employees and self-employed – engaged in any kind of productive activity that falls within the production boundary of National Accounts. Employees are defined as all persons who, by agreement, perform a gainful activity as wage earners, salaried employees, public officials and soldiers as well as pupils, students and other marginal part-time workers irrespective of the scope of such activity. The definition of self-employment also includes unpaid family workers. 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 (ILO) for the compilation of internationally comparable labour market statistics. Therefore, the results of the Employment Accounts are not only an important part of National Accounts, but – and this is especially true for the monthly employment figures – a key indicator of the continuous labour market reporting of the Federal Statistical Office at national and international levels; they form part of the indicators of the dissemination standard indicators of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Within the scope of National Accounts the quarterly and yearly results of the Employment Accounts serve as separate labour market indicators and as reference figures, for example, in the calculation of labour productivity rates 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 employment, are presented according to the resident concept (place-of-residence concept) or the domestic concept (place-of-work concept). To change over from the resident concept to the domestic concept, non-residents working in Germany are added and residents working abroad are subtracted. The quarterly and annual average numbers of persons in employment by industries are always shown according to the domestic concept in National Accounts.
How is the indicator calculated?
In order to meet both the requirements of the labour market statistics concerning current monthly employment figures as well as of quarterly and annual National Accounts, the Employment Accounts are designed in several stages. The first stage includes first preliminary flash estimates of the total number of employed persons in Germany for the previous month. The monthly employment flash estimates are carried out separately for different categories of employed persons: employees subject to full social insurance contributions, marginal employees with low pay, short-term marginal employees, persons in subsidized job opportunities, civil servants, soldiers, persons engaged in paid voluntary military or social services, self-employed and unpaid family workers. On the second stage of Employment Accounts all monthly, quarterly and annual results are generally based on detailed calculations by industry for each employment category.
Currently about 60 individual statistical sources obtained through different reporting channels are evaluated for the calculations at the different stages. Most of them are federal statistics for various sub-sectors of economy (agriculture and forestry, fisheries, industry, services) or other branch-specific employment information reported by institutions, enterprises and their establishments (for example in the field of postal / telecommunications, railway, or the financial system). The current monthly, quarterly or annual data sources for the private sector are supplemented by yearly data on public service personnel, monthly reports of the Ministry of Defence on the personnel of the armed forces by numbers and information on persons engaged in voluntary military or social services. Important economic cross-sectoral data sources are the microcensus resp. the herein integrated Labour Force Survey (LFS), the business register, the quarterly earnings surveys and, in particular, the employment register statistics of the Federal Employment Agency (BA), which is based on the reporting procedures to the statutory social insurances.
The quality and consistency of the employment data sources to be integrated in Employment Accounts is continuously checked. Furthermore, the results of the employment estimates are validated against other National Accounts aggregates (in particular the results of the production approach of the GDP and the calculation of the compensation of employees).
When is the indicator released?
As part of German labour market statistics, the Federal Statistical Office releases the overall monthly employment indicator as result of the flash employment estimate together with the number of unemployed persons and the unemployment rate, both derived from the LFS, about 30 days after the end of each reporting month. The monthly press release offers unadjusted and seasonally adjusted time series according to the resident concept. Monthly figures on employment according to the domestic concept are also available on the destatis-website at this early stage. A first quarterly employment figure for the overall economy is available at the date of the publication of the result for the third month of each quarter – that means also about 30 days after the reporting period. Detailed quarterly results of Employment Accounts regarding self-employed incl. unpaid family workers and employees by ten groups of industries (plus manufacturing) according to the Classification of Economic Activities, Edition 2008 (WZ 2008 resp. NACE revision 2) are regularly published about 45 days but no later than 50 days after the end of the reference quarter. Respectively in the first calendar week of the year, the Federal Statistical Office also publishes a first preliminary estimation on the annual average number of employed persons in the previous year. About 20 months after the end of the reporting year, the annual average employment figure is published in its most detailed breakdown by industries - currently 64 WZ 2008 positions – for the first time.
The detailed employment figures may be obtained from the GENESIS-Online database in tables 13321 (Labour market, Employment Accounts) and 81000-0011 (National Accounts). The press releases and the detailed release calendar are available on the website of the Federal Statistical Office.
How accurate is the indicator?
In releasing first employment figures early, the Federal Statistical Office meets the user demand for up-to-date and prompt available data. Though, in particular the first monthly flash estimates 30 days after the end of the reporting month are based on an incomplete set of statistical sources at that point of time. Therefore, the results of the Employment Accounts are continuously adjusted to the most recent level of information available. This takes into account that basic data sources required for employment calculations become available only successively and some of the results available in the short-term have to be corrected later due to a more complete data input. Therefore, the completeness and reliability of the basic input data and, consequently, the accuracy of the calculations improve with the time elapsing after the reference period.
In a multi-annual comparison, the first preliminary results of employment accounts turned out to be an average of 0.3 percent above or below the employment numbers published later and calculated on completed basic data sources. For some monthly results or for data by occupational status the average need for revision may be larger.
Apart from current routine revisions, which will are principle possible at each date of calculation, every five to ten years so-called "major revisions" take place, for example, to implement new concepts, definitions and classifications in German National Accounts and the integrated Employment Accounts that are based on the standards of the European System of Accounts (ESA) or to implement improved calculation methods. The main issue of the latest major revision in 2011 was the changeover of the German National Accounts to the Classification of Economic Activities, Edition 2008 (WZ 2008), which corresponds to the new Statistical Classification of Economic Activities in the European Community (NACE revision 2). Furthermore - as in every major revision - previous calculations and data bases were checked and new information was integrated into the time series on employment.
According to the results of the 2011 National Accounts revision, the number of employed persons in Germany in the revision period as from 1991 was on average 0.4 percent higher than previously reported. The year-on-year rates of change in total employment were revised on an average by 0.1 percentage points (Mean Absolute Revision; MAR) compared to the pre-revision status.