Employed persons

Statistics Denmark’s employment statistics include:

Register-based Labour Force Statistics (RAS and quarterly labour force statistics) assess employment by the end of November each year. To the maximum extent possible, RAS follows the international guidelines for compiling employment statistics. A person is employed when he or she has the equivalent of one hour of paid work in the reference week. It is relevant to use RAS if you want to show employment broken down in detail, e.g. by individual municipalities, single year age brackets, individual industries. RAS is also used for assessment of business commuting. In addition to the RAS statistics at the end of November, average employment is also compiled for the year and for the four quarters in the quarterly labour force statistics. 

The Labour Force Survey (LFS) is an interview survey that uses the internationally applied definition of employment (one hour of paid employment in the reference week). Thus, the LFS should be used in connection with international comparisons. Moreover, the LFS can shed light on conditions that are not registered in the administrative systems, e.g. whether part-time employees want to work more hours. The hour statistics in the LFS are weekly hours, which facilitates calculation of hours worked per employed person. Overall, the LFS has been prepared in the same way since the first quarter of 1995.

The Working Time Accounts (WTA) can be used when you want an unbroken time series for employment, jobs and hours worked. The information can be broken down by industry, sector and sex. As opposed to RAS and the LFS, employed persons registered with an address outside Denmark are also included in the WTA. The present statistics go back to the first quarter of 2008.

Employment Statistics for Employees are applied when you want a quick indicator of total employee employment measured as either number of employees with a job or full-time equivalent number of employees. Data goes back to 2008.

Public Employment Statistics compile the full-time equivalent number of employees in public administration and service. As the only set of the labour market statistics, the public employment statistics allow breakdown by classification of the functions of government (COFOG), which is the National Accounts’ breakdown of public expenses according to purpose. The present statistics go back to the first quarter of 2008. 

Documentation notes

The note Differences in concepts between employment statistics provides an overview of Statistics Denmark’s employment statistics, key concepts and differences in concepts between the various sets of statistics.

The overview International definitions related to employment includes the most central employment concepts in English as well as links to regulations and nomenclatures. 

The note Ny sektorkode i beskæftigelsesstatistikkerne describes the classification by sector, which was introduced in 2013.