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

2. 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

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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. 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

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

11. 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 units didn’t match (14,7%), responsible for 0,3% of total wages.

12. 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 enterprises couldn’t be matched to a fiscal unit from the administrative source.

13. 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?

14. 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

15. 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.

16. 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

17. 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

18. Questions?