The annual and quarterly working time accounts before the 2016 revision (Discontinued)

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Employment, Labour Market, Social Statistics
Michèle Naur
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The Annual and Quarterly Working Time Accounts Before the 2016 revision 2016 Quarter 1

The Danish Working Time Accounts (WTA) is an integrated statistics with consistent time series on employment, number of jobs, hours worked and compensation of employees in both annual and quarterly basis. The current time series goes back to 2008 (quarterly statistics as from the 1st quarter of 2008).

Statistical presentation

The Working Time Accounts produce integrated statistics with consistent time series on employment, jobs, number of hours worked and compensation of employees on an annual and quarterly basis. The data basis is made up by a number of primary statistical data, which are adapted and adjusted to achieve agreement of the concepts and definitions used in the WTA system.

The statistical sources used in the WTA are:

The Register-Based Labour Force statistics (RAS),
Establishment-related employment statistics (ERE statistics),
The Structural Earning Statistics (SES),
Employment Statistics for Employees (BfL) og
The Labour Force Survey (LFS).

Statistical processing

The population and concepts as well as levels of the variables are defined by annual structural data sources. Short-term data sources are applied in projecting these levels over the months of the year and in periods for which structural data are not available. Summation of the data in the Working Time Account is conducted before they are projected. Data in the Working Time Account are seasonally adjusted both for use in Denmark as well as for use in Eurostat’s STS. The system contains a data-editing system, a correction system and a dissemination system.

Relevance

Users interested in the social and economic statistics have expressed satisfaction with the quality of the statistics. However, they also expressed frustration over large data breaches, especially in the transition to e-Income-based sources.

Accuracy and reliability

There are no calculations of the measures of accuracy.

See section quality assessment.

Timeliness and punctuality

Working hours are regularly published in accordance with Statistics Denmark's benchmark goals.

For quarterly statistics concerned, this goal implies that the publications to be released at the latest by the end of the following quarter. For the sake of short-term business regulation (STS), this implies that the WTA to be published typically by the middle of the last month of the following quarter. (The requirement for most employment series for STS is 2 months and 15 days). For annual statistics concerned, this implies that publications to be released at the latest by the end of the following year. In the interest of national accounts the annual WTA will be published in June with provisional figures for the previous year. This makes the annually WTA for the year t to be published in the same month as the publication of the quarterly WTA for the period 1 quarter t +1.

The transition to the new WTA resulted, however, that annual WTA 2011, based on the new eIncome sources, were not published until December 2012, whereas the publication of the quarterly statistics has not given rise to any delay.

Comparability

WTA deliver labour market data to Eurostat's corporate short-term regulation (STS) and the national accounts (ESA / ESA). Therefore, changes in these regulations typically result in changes in the WTA. A description of the transitional tables between the WTA and the National Accounts can be found in the publications on the National Accounts. Transitional tables between the WTA and the Register-based Labour Force Statistics and the Establishment-related Employment Statistics are published in Statistical News ("Statistiske Efterretninger") for the annual WTA.

Accessibility and clarity

The statistics are published in:

News from Statistics Denmark (Nyt fra Danmarks Statistik),
in the series Statistical News ("Statistiske Efterretninger") and
in the Statbank Denmark ("Danmarks Statistikbank").