0 Administrative Information about the Statistical Product


0.1 Name
Labour Force Survey

0.2 Subject Area
Labour market

0.3 Responsible Authority, Office, Person, etc.
Michael Frosch, phone 39 17 34 34, email: mif@dst.dk
Sammy Lauritsen, phone 39 17 34 47, email: ssl@dst.dk
Irina Bernstein, phone 39 17 34 98, email irb@dst.dk
Annette Gewecke Nancke, phone 39 17 34 03, email: agp@dst.dk
Wendy Takacs Jensen, phone 39 17 34 02, email: wta@dst.dk

0.4 Purpose and History
The purpose of the Labour Force Survey is giving a description of the labour market status of the Danish population. This description includes a classification of people into employed, unemployed or outside the labour force (economically inactive). The Labour Force Survey also manages to measure information like how many people are working part time; how many hours men in their 30s or 40s usually work; or how many elderly people outside the labour market would like to have a job.

The survey follows international guidelines from the International Labour Organization (ILO) on statistics on labour market status of populations.

Labour Force Surveys are carried out in every European country as well as in many other countries around the world following common concepts and guidelines. This makes the Labour Force Survey the best Danish survey for international comparisons on labour market statistics.

The Danish Labour Force Survey has been conducted yearly since 1984, and from 1994 the survey has been conducted continuously throughout the year. From January 2007 the survey has been expanded considerably and the data collection process has been outsourced.

0.5 Users and Application
The Labour Force Survey is used by a number of users, among others by ministries, research institutes, international organizations, journalists, and curious citizens.

The survey is used for monitoring and analyzing the labour market, as well as in research projects, public debate, and contributes to Denmark always having updated knowledge on labour market issues.

0.6 Sources
The Labour Force Survey is based on approximately 89,000 conducted interviews a year with people aged 15 to 74 years. The interviews are conducted by telephone.

Different administrative resources are used to select the sample. Administrative sources are also used to obtain various background information on the people interviewed, for example on educational level or workplace.

These registers are being used for the Labour Force Survey:

Central Population Register (CPR)
Population Register
The Register of Labour Market Statistics (RAM)
Educational Classification Module (BUE)
Register based-labour force statistics (RAS)

0.7 Legal Authority to Collect Data
The Act on Statistics Denmark.

The processing of data must be approved by the Danish Data Protection Agency, which is responsible for the general supervision and administration.

0.8 Response burden
The survey is not included in the calculation of Statistics Denmark's index of response burden.

0.9 EU Regulation
The Council Regulation (EC) No 577/98 of 9 March 1998 on the organisation of a labour force survey in the Community.

Regulation (EC) No 2257/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 November 2003 amending Council Regulation (EC) No 577/98 on the organisation of a labour force survey in the Community to adapt the list of survey characteristics.


1 Contents


1.1 Description of Contents
The Labour Force Survey describes the labour market status of the Danish population. The population is classified into employed, unemployed or economically inactive people (outside the labour force).

Furthermore, the survey provides detailed data on for example hours worked, conditions of employment, job search, and participation in courses and other education, for example in-service training or school courses. Consequently the survey can, among other things, estimate the number of employed people who work at home regularly; how many self-employed people who work during weekends; or how many people have found their job with the help of a public employment office.

1.2 Statistical Concepts
The main variable in the Labour Force Survey is the labour market status of the population.

The survey classifies people into two main categories: people in the labour force and people outside the labour force. Furthermore, people in the labour force are categorized as either employed or unemployed. Conscripts are considered as employed.

The classification of respondents is based on their labour market status and follows EU definitions and recommendations from the International Labour Organization (ILO) definitions: Every respondent is interviewed about one specific reference week. All questions on work, working hours, unemployment etc. relates to this specific week.

Employed are all people, who in the reference week worked for payment or worked as self-employed or family workers for at least one hour. People temporarily absent perhaps due to vacation, illness, or maternity leave are considered to be employed.

Unemployed are all people without employment, who have actively been looking for work in the past four weeks prior to the reference week and who are able to begin a job within two weeks after the reference week ends. Active job-search methods include contact with a public employment office, applications to employers, contact with friends, relatives or trade unions, or for example studying or answering advertisements in newspapers or journals. Looking for permits, licences, financial resources, land, premises or equipment for potential self-employment are also considered as active job search.

Everyone else is categorized outside the labour force.

Labour force reserve
The labour force reserve is made up of persons who are available to the labour market, i.e. employed persons, who wish to work more, and unemployed persons. The labour force reserve rises if more people become unemployed or the employed persons wish to work more. More people are unemployed if the employed lose their job or inactive persons start looking for one.

The labour force reserve contains the number of hours that the employed wish to work more than their current weekly working hours, added to the number of hours the unemployed wish to work pr. week. This number is multiplied by the 52 weeks of the year and converted to full time equivalents of 1 924 hours (the Danish standard full time equivalent).

If the respondent is unable to give the nunber of hours he/she normally works pr. week, the contractual number of hours is used. For employees with flexitime systems, the contractual hours are always used, since overtime is expected to be compensated by reduced work in other weeks. Unemployed persons are divided depending on their wish for full-time or part-time work. Dependending on the amount of work they look for, they are weighted according to the average hours worked by the corresponding employees in the current quarter.

The labour force reserve is split into economic activity areas according to the following criteria: For the employed part of the reserve, the economic activity is taken from their main job. For the unemployed part, the economic activity is taken from the main job they had, when they were last employed.

Socio-economic status
Socio-economic status is related to the traditional classification into employees, self-employed and family workers.

Employees are classified as top managers, employees at upper level, at intermediate level, and at basic level, or other employees.

Employees are, furthermore, classified into occupation, for example nurse, teacher or mechanic, on the basis of skills or qualifications necessary for exercising their work function. These skills or qualifications can be achieved either by formal education or informal training and experience.

The classification of employee es complies with the Danish nomenclature DISCO-88, the Danish version of ISCO88.

The classification socioeconomic status is furthermore described in the publication SOCIO, Danmarks Statistiks Socioøkonomisk Klassifikation 1997.

Classification of industry groups
People in the Labour Force Survey are also classified into industry groups, i.e. based on the businesses, they work in, for example in wholesale and retail trade, hotels and restaurants, or in manufacturing.

From 1st quarter 2009 the Danish nomenclature Dansk Branchekode 2007 (Danish Industrial Classification of All Economic Activities), (DB07) has been applied to classify the industry group of the respondents. The nomenclature DB07 is based on the definitions of the European Union's nomenclature NACE rev. 2 from January 2008.
From 2003 until 2008 Dansk Branchekode 2003 (Danish Industrial Classification of All Economic Activities), (DB03) was applied and from 1994 until 2002 Dansk Branchekode 1993 (Danish Industrial Classification of All Economic Activities), (DB93) was applied. Before 1994 the classification of industries of 1st April 1977 was used.


2 Time


2.1 Reference Period
Every respondent is interviewed about one specific reference week (Monday to Sunday). All questions on work, working hours, unemployment etc. relates to this specific week. Interviews are conducted every day all year.

2.2 Date of Publication
The results are published every quarter in News from Statistics Denmark (Nyt fra Danmarks Statistik).
Furthermore, yearly results are published every spring in News (Year) from Statistics Denmark (Nyt fra Danmarks Statistik).

2.3 Punctuality
The statistics are usually published without delay to the scheduled date.

2.4 Frequency
News from Statistics Denmark are published quarterly.

Statistical News is published once a year with reference to the following year.


3 Accuracy


3.1 Overall accuracy
The Labour Force Survey is a reliable survey. In other European countries where similar Labour Force Surveys are carried out, the official unemployment figures come from the Labour Force Survey. In Denmark the most used unemployment figures deprives from administrative registers (see paragraph 4.2 on RAM). However, when a Danish unemployment rate is to be used for international comparison, usually the unemployment rate from the Labour Force Survey is being used.

Results from the Labour Force Survey are also being used for labour market analysis, in research projects and in the public debate.

3.2 Sources of inaccuracy
Equivalent to other surveys based on sample sizes the results of the survey have some sampling errors attached. The sampling errors are related to the sample selection and the patterns of non-response. Non-response occurs when an interview with a selected person is not carried out. Non-response increases the inaccuracy rate because the probability of conducting an interview with all selected people is uneven. In other words, it is the same kind of sections of the populations where interviews are not being carried out at the same extent as other sections of the population. Consequently the level of representativity is affected.

Sample size:
The Labour Forces Survey is based on a quarterly sample of approximately 37,000 people aged 15 to 74. The sample is divided into 13 sub-samples of equal size, one for each week in the interview quarter, and people are interviewed with reference to one of the reference weeks.

The survey entity is individuals.

Data collection:
The Labour Force Survey is based on telephone interviews and are conducted every day, every week, all year.

The survey is a rotating panel survey including four waves each quarter. Due to the design respondents participate in the survey several times. During one and a half years respondents participate four times. First in two quarters in a row, then an interval of two quarters and then participations in two quarters again. The purpose is to be able to measure both quarterly and yearly changes of employment and unemployment.

Stratified sampling and weighting:
In order to measure unemployment adequately, former unemployed people are selected with a higher probability than others. The sample size consists of approximately one fifth earlier registered unemployed, due to the coherence between people registered as unemployed in an earlier quarter and in the present one. The purpose is to ensure a sufficient number of observations of unemployed people to be able to make proper analysis of them. This stratification is taken into account in the weighting of the results.

Furthermore, in weighting the following distributions are taken into account: gender, age, registered unemployment, income, socio-economic status, education, immigration, region and mobility.

Sampling error:
Sampling errors are a matter of concern especially for small observations. Consequently published results are always disseminated rounded to the nearest 1,000 persons. Furthermore, some of the results are based on annual averages to increase the number of interview responses and from that derive more reliable results.

Besides this some of the results are complemented with information of the corresponding standard errors, illustrated by intervals of confidence in the following way: +/- sampling error (interval of confidence). The sampling error is calculated as 1.96*standard error, and 1.96 corresponds to the 97.5 quantile in the standardized normal distribution.
The sampling error depends on the sample size. For example, the sampling error for estimates is approximately halved when the sample size is doubled by four. Therefore in several cases it will be an advantage to use data from the last four quarters in stead of only the present one.

Information on the sampling errors is important, because it enables the user to assess to what extent, e.g. a change in the level of employment is merely a result of the corresponding sampling error, or a significant decrease or increase.To give a description of the corresponding sampling error for small or large groups in a survey, intervals of confidence are often applied rather than standard errors of variances. In the Danish Labour Force Survey it has been decided to apply intervals of confidence at a 95 significance level. This means: if the survey was repeated 100 times s, in 95 out of 100 cases the estimate would be bounded by this interval, while only in 5 cases the estimate would range above or beneath these limits.

Until now the inaccuracy has only been calculated on the main estimates of the Labour Force Survey, i.e. the figures for employment, unemployment, size of the labour force and those not in the labour force. As from 2008 onwards the inaccuracy will also be calculated on the quarterly variations. If the quarterly variations are outside the calculated inaccuracy interval, the change is statistically significant at a 95 p.c. significance level. This increases the transparency of the survey and improves the ability to interpret the results.

Non-response and response rate:
Each quarter a sample size of approximately 37,000 people are selected from the Population Register. However, around 15 percent of the sample size cannot be contacted either because they have chosen the option in the Central Population Register law to refuse participation in surveys, have passed away, or have emigrated.

Of the remaining group the response rate is usually between 63 to 68 percent.

3.3 Measures on accuracy
See section 3.2, Sources of inaccuracy.


4 Comparability


4.1 Comparability over Time
1984 was the first time Denmark started a large survey on the populations labour market status. Though, it was conducted only once a year during spring time.

In 1994 the Labour Force Survey was established as we know it today. From this time the survey has been conducted continuously every day all through the year. In 2000 the questionnaire was changed significantly, however the changes did not affect the main indicators such as the number of employed, unemployed and outside the labour force.

From January 2007 the survey has been changed and expanded considerably. Until this time the survey was based on approximately 40,000 interviews yearly. But in order to reduce sampling errors of survey results it was chosen to more than double the number of conducted interviews. Today the survey is based on approximately 89,000 interviews. Besides this the rotation pattern was changed from three to four waves.

Furthermore, the data collection process which Statistics Denmark had been in charge of so far was outsourced.

4.2 Comparability with other Statistics
International statistics:
The Labour Force Survey is the Danish contribution to the co-European Labour Force Surveys. Topics, categories, definitions and so on are laid down by the European Union which makes the surveys suitable for both overall and very specific international comparisons of labour market issues.
Lots of countries outside the EU also carry out similar Labour Force Surveys. This means that the Danish Labour Force Survey is the best Danish survey for international comparisons of labour market statistics.

Other employment statistics

Register based-labour force statistics (RAS):

Both the Labour Force Survey and RAS examine the populations labour market status. The Labour Force Survey is based on interviews, while RAS is based on administrative sources. Due to the fact that it takes time to gather information from several of the administrative registers the data processing time is a bit more than a year for RAS. This means, that information on people registered as full time unemployed in November 2005 will be published in the spring of 2007.

RAS publishes results only once a year, but publishes very detailed information.

The degree of consistency between the Labour Force Survey and RAS is usually high with respect to the key results, for example the number of employed and unemployed people in Denmark. However, for some variables for example - full-time/ part-time employees - significant differences appear. This is due to completely different compilation methods.

Some information on the populations labour market relations is better collected by RAS than by the Labour Force Survey, because RASs base is the total population, whereas the Labour Force Survey is based on a sample size of the population. In a sample, small groups - like immigrant groups - can be unreliable due to too high sampling error. In these areas RAS is a good substitution. However, if the wish for example is to know of how many part-time employed who would like to work full-time; how many people that work at home regularly; or how many people that have found their job with the help of a public employment office, the Labour Force Survey is the best statistics.

ATP-employment statistics (ATP):
Another source of employment statistics is the ATP-employment statistics. It is a fast quarterly register-based employment indicator. The purpose of the statistics is to measure the number of full-time wage-earners in Denmark. It is measured from the wage-earners payment of ATP (Labour Market Supplementary Pension). The number of employed people is measured in the number of "full-time equivalents", meaning that two half-time employees "half" payments will be calculated into one full-time employed. This means that the ATP-employment statistics cannot give information on the development in the number of part-time or temporary employed people. The Labour Force Survey should be used for that. The same is true for the number of self-employed people in placecountry-regionDenmark. Self-employed people do not pay in ATP and are consequently not included in the ATP-employment statistics.

The general trend of the employment indicator and the Danish Labour Force Survey on the number of wage-earners in Denmark is usually more or less consistent.

The Register of Labour Market Statistics, Unemployment (RAM)
The most used unemployment statistics in Denmark is RAM. RAM is based on the information from every public employment office and unemployment insurance funds in Denmark. The purpose is to measure the number of unemployed people in Denmark and an unemployment rate is published every month. RAM measures the number of unemployed people in "full-time equivalents". This means that part-time unemployed for example a person with a small job, who also receives complementary unempl loyment benefit from the local jobcentre under the Danish Social Assistance Act are calculated as a certain percentage of a full-time unemployed. A half-time unemployed person will for example count as ½ full-time unemployed.

In the Labour Force Survey and according to the Statistical Office of the European Communities, Eurostat, people are defined as employed if they have worked for at least one hour in the reference week. A person who works 15 hours a week and who also receives complementary unemployment benefit will be defined as employed in the Labour Force Survey. In RAM-unemployment statistics this person will be included in the group of unemployed people, because the complementary unemployment benefit reflects registration as unemployed at a public employment office.

The issue whether or not a person has to be registered as unemployed at a public employment office to be considered unemployed or not is a distinct difference between the Labour Force Survey and RAM.

In RAM a person has to be registered as unemployed at a public employment office to be included in the unemployment statistics.

The Labour Force Survey and the European statistical bureau Eurostat do not have that requirement. This is because of the different labour market models around placeEurope. Not all countries have a policy where people register oneself when unemployed. For the sake of international comparison, the important issue is therefore whether or not people have been working or not, not whether people are registered or not.

According to the Danish Labour Force Survey, even in Denmark, only approximately half of the unemployed people are receiving unemployment benefit. The other half consists among others of students without work and early retired people who are actively looking for a job and declare that they can start a job within two weeks.

At the same time some of the people included in RAMs unemployment statistics is not considered unemployed in the Labour Force Survey. For example people, who do not actively look for a job or who are not able to start a job within two weeks. If people do not meet these criteria they are defined as outside the labour force regardless if they are registered at a public employment office or not.

Due to the different definitions of unemployment, the results from RAM and the Labour Force Survey can vary some.

4.3 Coherence between provisional and final statistics
Only final figures are published.


5 Accessibility


5.1 Forms of dissemination
The Danish Labour Force Survey is published in the news release Nyt fra Danmarks Statistik (News from Statistics Denmark), in Arbejdsmarked (Labour market) in the series Statistiske Efterretninger (Statistical News), in Konjunkturstatistik (Main Indicators), Statistisk Årbog (Statistical Yearbook of Statistics Denmark).

Statistical data are also available at the homepage of the Labour Force Survey: and in Statistikbanken (Statbank Denmark): .

In 2003 and 2004 a couple of publications on specific themes have been published in Danish also.

5.2 Basic material: Storage and usability
Data are based on individuals, and contain both survey and register variables.

5.3 Documentation
See Arbejdsmarked (Labour market) in the series Statistiske Efterretninger (Statistical News).

5.4 Other Information
Other information is not available.


Supplementary documentation
No supplementary documentation is available