The EU Labour Force Survey : on the way to convergence and quality - ARCHIVED

The European Union Labour Forces Survey (LFS) is based on national surveys that were originally very different. For the past decade, under pressure from increasingly demanding users (particularly with respect to timeliness, comparability and flexibility), the LFS has been subjected to a constant process of quality improvement.

The following topics are presented in this paper:
A. the quality improvement process, which comprises screening national survey methods, target structure, legal foundations, quality reports, more accurate and more explicit definitions of components, etc.;
B. expected or achieved results, which include an ongoing survey producing quarterly results within reasonable time frames, comparable employment and unemployment rates over time and space in more than 25 countries, specific information on current political topics, etc.;
C. continuing shortcomings, such as implementation delays in certain countries, possibilities of longitudinal analysis, public access to microdata, etc.;
D. future tasks envisioned, such as adaptation of the list of ISCO and ISCED variables and nomenclatures (to take into account evolution in employment and teaching methods), differential treatment of structural variables and increased recourse to administrative files (to limit respondent burden), harmonization of questionnaires, etc.