LAMAS Working Group 12-13 December 2013 Agenda Item 4.1 Workshop on Monthly Unemployment nicola.massarelli@ec.europa.eu

Organisation and attendance Held in Heerlen, 7-8 November 2013 Jointly organised by Eurostat and CBS Nearly 60 participants from 30 different national and international institutions 22 presentations in 6 sessions over 2 days

Goals Ultimate objective: Specific goals: Enhance quality of Monthly Unemployment statistics through common guidelines Specific goals: Review and discuss methods Identify best practices Promote production directly by NSIs

Main findings

LFS is the basis for reliable MU statistics Possible to streamline the LFS with relatively low costs and burden Concentrate fieldwork in the 2 weeks after reference week Streamline data transmission from the interviewers Speed up editing operations Ensure commitment from other production units to provide more timely input (e.g. population estimates) Apply an appropriate distribution of the sample over geographical areas on a monthly basis

4 methods identified Regression composite estimation Structural time-series approach Standard calibration of monthly samples (e.g. GREG) Temporal disaggregation Tests of these methods on the same data would be useful

Consistency is important Consistency over time Can always be ensured at macro level Potentially more accurate if ensured by NSIs Consistency between different periodicities Monthly to quarterly or vice-versa Implications of the different benchmarking approaches still to be assessed

Auxiliary information, trend estimates and revision policy Registered unemployment as auxiliary information Not always improves results. Misleading when it evolves differently from ILO unemployment Trends Not as informative as SA Not directly comparable with SA Revisions Revisions are information, even if puzzling for users. Hiding revisions is not a solution

Volatility is an issue Erratic movements erode the credibility of the monthly indicator Some of the 4 methods mentioned before would likely help Are trends or 3-month moving averages acceptable? If yes, in which situation?

Need for common solutions Required quality (e.g. acceptable volatility and revisions), Estimation methodologies Nature of the data (e.g. pure monthly or 3-mma; seasonally-adjusted or trends, etc.) Length of consistent time-series Timeliness Reference periods Breakdowns

Next steps NSIs may be asked to cooperate Eurostat drafts a discussion paper with proposals addressing the aforementioned issues NSIs may be asked to cooperate LAMAS discussion in 2014, possibly in June A TF to settle possible remaining pending issues might be considered after a fist discussion Depending on the progress made, guidelines could be agreed by end 2014 or first half 2015

LAMAS is invited to: Comment on the outcome of the workshop Agree on the content and the schedule for the next steps