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Purpose and history
The purpose of the RAS statistics is to provide a description of the Danish population's attachment to the labour market at a given moment en time (at the end of November). RAS statistics follows the international guidelines set by the International Labour Organisation (ILO). The guidelines are directed at Surveys (Labour Force Surveys) where information about attachment to the labour market is given by respondents. In RAS the guidelines from ILO have been adjusted to the fit the possibilities available when using material based on registers.

The first version of the RAS statistics includes the population resident in Denmark as of the 1 January 1981 and its attachment to the labour market at the end of November 1980. The statistics have been compiled once every year over the period 1981 to 2006.

Description of Contents
The register-based labour force statistics (RAS) are annual status observations of the population's attachment to the labour market at a given point-in-time at the end of November.

The RAS statistics the population is divided into 3 main groups according to the guidelines laid down by the ILO. The 3 groups are persons in employment, unemployed and persons outside the labour force. Employed persons are either employees, self-employed or assisting spouses. Persons outside the labour force are divided into 4 groups. Persons temporarily outside the labour force, retired from the labour force, Pensioners and others outside the labour force.

In some cases a person can be part several different groups at the time of reference (they are a part of more than one gross stock). To determine the most important attachment to the labour market an order of priority is used. The order of priority is based on:

- The principles for the population's attachment to the labour market as given from ILO (International Labour Organisation)- The quality of the sources- The extent of the persons participation in the different activitiesIn 2003 there is a break in the timeseries of the register based labour force statistics (RAS). Changes on the labour market and better sources resulted in a need for alterations in the statistics. The alterations resulted in e new priority:

Before 2003:
1. Unemployed
2. Early retirement pensioners.
3. Employers
4. Employees with jobs at full-time equivalence
5. VAT-registered persons
6. Self-employed insured against unemployment.
7. Employees with jobs at part-time equivalence, or duration of employment not stated.
8. Other self-employed
9. Assisting spouses.
10. Recipients of early retirement pay
11. Participants in labour market policy schemes.
12. Recipients of benefits during sickness or childbirth
13. Recipients of rehabiliation or cash benefits
14. Children and young people
15. Recipients of old age pension or early retirement pay
16. Recipients of civil servants' earned pensions
17. Persons in education
18. Others outside the labour force.

From 2003:
1. Unemployed
2. Employers
3. Employees with jobs at full-time equivalence
4. VAT-registered persons with activity above the triviality limit
5. Employees with jobs at part-time equivalence, or duration of employment not stated.
6. VAT-registered persons with activity belove the triviality limit
7. Early retirement pensioners.
8. Self-employed insured against unemployment.
9. Other self-employed
10. Assisting spouses.
11. Participants in labour market policy schemes.
12. Recipients of rehabilitation payment.
13. Recipients of unemployment payment
14. Recipients of benefits during sickness or childbirth
15. Recipients of cash benefits or introduction payment
16. Children and young people
17. Recipients of old age pension or early retirement pay
18. Recipients of civil servants' earned pensions
19. Persons in education
20. Other recipients of labour market policies payment
21. Others outside the labour force.

From 2004 the order of priority between Recipients of civil servants' earned pensions and Persons in education are switched.

RAS also contains addresses of workplace and home addresses. The information is used to create statistics of commuting.

Statistical Concepts
The population in the RAS statistics are persons resident in Denmark on January 1. The populations attachment to the labour market at the end of November the year before is measured.

The RAS statistics contain a number of variables. The most important variable is socio-economic status, which is defined for each person in the population. The population is divided into following groups:

- Self-employed
- Assisting spouses
- Top managers
- Employees upper level
- Employees medium level
- Employees basic level
- Other employees
- Employees not specified- Unemployed
- Recipients of pension benefits payable between early retirement and normal retirement pension.
- Participants in labour market policy without pay
- Participants in educational activities
- Participants in specially adapted projects
- Participants in integration education
- Recipients of unemployment payment
- Participants in rehabilitation programs
- Recipients of benefits during childbirth
- Recipients of benefits during sickness
- Recipients of cash benefits
- Recipients of introduction payment
- Children and young people
- Recipients of old age pension
- Recipients of early retirement pay,
- Persons in education
- Recipients of other pensions
- Other recipients of labour market policies payment
- Others outside the labour force.

Special notes regarding socioeconomic status for employees
Employees are divided into levels of skills based on DISCO-88. The level of skills is achieved through education or learning in praxis. The employees are divided into six groups

1. Top managers in enterprises, organizations and the public sector
2. Employees doing work that requires upper level skills.
3. Employees doing work that requires medium level skills.
4. Employees doing work that requires basic level skills.
5. Other employees
6. Employees not specified

Group 1: Includes managerial work at the upper administrative level in enterprises and organizations- regardless of size or skill requirements. The work consists of decision making, planning and controlling etc.

Group 2: Includes work that requires upper level skills. The group includes physicists, building engineers, architects, doctors, midwives, teachers, lawyers, accountants, librarians, journalists, actors, musicians, priests.

Group 3: Includes work that requires medium level skills. The work consists of technical work in production and transport, as well as assistance in trade and administration. Also in consists of education and caretaking in kindergartens and residential homes for children and young persons together with nursing and assisting work in the health sector e.g. laboratory technician, computer programmer, photographer, nurse, kindergarten teacher, real estate agent, police officer.

Group 4: Includes work that requires basic level skills. The work consists of office work, customer service, surveillance, rescue work, farm work, gardening, crafts oriented work and operating different types of stationary machinery.

Group 5: this is a residual group. It contains work that does not belong to one of the other groups e.g. cleaning, delivering services, guard work, packing and transport work without the use of machinery.

Group 6: Contains persons where skill level cannot be determined, due to missing information in the statistic registers.

The period 1997-2003
The information regarding the level of skills for employees working in the State, Counties and Municipalities is collected from Earnings Statistics on central and local government employees. Information on employees in the private sector comes either from EEarnings Statistics for the private sector, or from the unemployment statistics register, or from the education classification module. The information from Earnings Statistics relates to the persons most important job during the year, this might not be the same job, in which the person is employed at the end of November.

The period 2004
From 2004 the level of skills is for 67 pct. of the employed directly connected to the job they are managing at the end of November. Therefore there is a much better coherence between the level of skill and variables of industry and sector. For some part of the employees, information about earnings is still missing. For these persons other sources such as information about education and line of industry, and membership of unemployment insurance fund are used. Today people can choice more freely between unemployment insurance funds. This makes it harder to establish the level of skill, when the only source is membership of such a fund. As a consequence the group: Employees not specified has grown.

About the level of skills
As a consequence of validating information about earnings, the number of reports from the private sector fluctuates across years. Therefore it is advised to be very careful, when using information about socioeconomic status for employees. Analysis of the development in number of employees at a specific skill level must always take into account the development of the employees not specified.

Information about the person originates mostly from other registers in system of person statistics. The following list includes the most important variables:

- Demographic information (e.g. sex, age, county of living)
- Education (completed education, ongoing education)
- Ethnicity (country of birth)
- Income
- Information about participation in Labour market policy measures
- Unemployment
- Extent of working time (full-time/part-time)

Background information on workplace and person
The statistics includes background information about the person and the place of work. The most important information about the workplace is:

-Industry (of the workplace)
-Municipality (of the workplace)
-sector (of the workplace))

  Read more about the statistics on 'Register-based labour force statistics (RAS statistics)' in our Declarations of contents

Releases

Last updated:	14 May 2009
Scheduled releases:	17 May 2010 for the period 1 January 2009

Contact

Thomas Thorsen
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