ESSnet on Consistency Workshop Gresham Hotel, Dublin, 24th and 25th of April 2012

Use of the business register in the Dutch labour statistics Jorrit Zwijnenburg Workshop ESSnet on Consistency of Concepts and Methods of Business-related Statistics Dublin, 24th-25th of April 2012

Contents Design of Dutch labour statistics Role of the business register Challenges regarding the use of the business register Conclusions

Dutch Labour Statistics (1) Output on employment, wages and hours paid Development of employment & wages on a quarterly basis Regional employment on an annual basis Detailed levels of employment, wages and hours paid on an annual basis (including a huge micro-dataset on job level) Maximal use of register data Minimal response burden

Dutch Labour Statistics (2) Until 2006: - Annual Survey on Employment and Earnings (ASEE) - Mix of paper and electronic questionnaires - 25 thousand enterprises, 4 million employees - Ultimo year (31st of December) As of 2006: - New law on administration of taxes and social security (‘Walvis’ law) - New register with information on wages and social contributions - All enterprises, all employees, all year

Administrative data source (1) Employer Employee Declaration of wages and premiums Social security benefits Tax Authorities Employers’-register Social Security Org. Employees’-register Collection Distribution Statistics Netherlands

Administrative data source (2) Data deliveries: Collective data from Employers’-register: - Enterprise information - Delivered by Tax Authorities - Weekly - Declaration periods: month, 4-weeks, half-year, year Nominative data from Employees’-register: - Person information - Delivered by Social Security Org.

Administrative data source (3) Content of data deliveries: Collective data from Employers’-register: - Unit is enterprise (fiscal unit) - ID (FiNr), name, branche, existence period, etc. - Wage totals, tax contributions, tax discounts, etc. Nominative data from Employees’-register: - Unit is person - ID (SoNr), gender, date of birth, nationality, etc. - Categorial variables: type of income relation (employee, social benefit, pension), type of contract (fixed, temporary), etc. - Quantitative variables: wages, soc. contributions, hours paid, etc.

Linkage to General Business Register Aims: - Add economic activity (NACE) - Add enterprise (unit) location - Co-ordination with other statistics How? - Relation table fiscal units - enterprises

Challenges regarding the use of the business register (1) Non-matching units Allocation issues Time lag Co-ordination over statistics

Challenges regarding the use of the business register (2) Non-matching units in administrative source ‘Foreign’ entities Personalized social budgets Religious organisations Special Purpose Entities Time lag issues Delineation issues Over 2011 almost 130.000 units didn’t match (14,7%), responsible for 0,3% of total wages.

Challenges regarding the use of the business register (3) Non-matching units in business register ‘Foreign’ entities? Time lag issues Delineation issues Over 2011 around 100.000 enterprises couldn’t be matched to a fiscal unit from the administrative source.

Challenges regarding the use of the business register (4) Allocation issues Fiscal unit Enterprise 1 Enterprise 2 Enterprise 3 Enterprise 4 What information is available for allocating the correct data to the underlying enterprises?

Challenges regarding the use of the business register (5) Especially allocation issues with government data Fiscal units by government on a very agrregated level; they cover a lot of different underlying entities Government, financial institutions and health care sector are poorly recorded within the business register More and more demand for accurate data on the number of civil servants per government institution

Challenges regarding the use of the business register (6) Time lag issues The Dutch business register records births and deaths of enterprises with a time lag of a couple of months. This might lead to missing data. It should be considered to use information on births and deaths of enterprises from administrative data.

Challenges regarding the use of the business register (7) Co-ordination: Business register as a co-ordination mechanism between various statistics Which version of the BR is used in which statistic? How to deal with corrections? Different timing can lead to implausible indicators such as productivity

Conclusions With administrative data the BR has an important role as a co-ordination and allocation tool Some issues still have to be tackled Administrative data provide usefull information for the BR

Questions?