1. LAMAS Working Group 6-7 December 2017
Agenda Item 2.5 Use of registers in LFS
Eurostat

2. Background Use of registers is encouraged in the IESS FR to
enhance the quality;
reduce the costs of the survey.
Any use of register employment or unemployment must not impact on the harmonised measurement of the ILO labour force status in the LFS.
The main available informative sources on the use of registers in LFS are:
Annual quality reports
Results of the country consultation run in September/October 2017
Methodological notes available on NSIs Websites
Publications - Working papers

3. Consultation on use of non-demographic administrative data in LFS
Phases of the LFS production process in which countries might make use of registers:
Sample design;
Error correction and imputation of item non-response;
Imputation of unit non-response;
Weighting procedure (post-stratification/calibration)
31 countries (28 EU, 2 EFTA and Turkey) replied to the consultation

4. Sample design
6 countries (BE, DK, ES, FR, NL, SE) make use of non- demographic administrative data in the sample design phase
BE, DK, NL, SE use employment registers;
BE, ES, FR, SE use income/tax registers;
DK uses education registers;
DK and SE make use of integrated registers based on several administrative sources.
BE uses registers but only for sorting of the PSU's
DE, CY, HU use registers closely related to the demographic context
EoV clarified better Belgian approach.
Registers closely related to the demographic context:
Germany: addresses from the census are compounded to sampling districts from which an area sample is drawn; sampling districts are updated yearly by the building permissions as submitted by the building authorities.
Hungary uses a registry of dwellings as sampling frame.
Cyprus uses the list of domestic consumers of electricity obtained from the Electricity Authority of Cyprus.

5. Error correction and imputation
Item non-response – editing, correction and imputation: No country makes use of non-demographic administrative data for this purpose. Annual QRs: 18 countries edit and correct LFS data and 15 countries impute in case of item non-response Unit non-response - imputation: Only Finland mentioned to use non-demographic administrative data in the imputation phase for unit non- response in order to find the donor of the LFS variables. Annual QRs: ES, SK, UK also impute for unit non-response
In EoV point 3.2 Belgium affirms SES data are used for the imputation for INCDECIL, so this is survey data and not register data. Indeed document refers Belgium applies data imputation procedures in general. Maybe this point in the document was not definitely clear
FR use NRS only in calibration procedure and not in the unit non-response imputation

6. Weighting procedure
9 countries (DK, FR, LV, NL, AT, FI, SE, NO, CH) make use of non-demographic administrative data in weighting
Non-demographic administrative data used
Countries
Answers
employment registers
NL, AT, SE, NO, CH 5
unemployment registers
DK, LV, NL, AT, FI, SE, NO, CH 8
social security registers
AT, CH 2
income/tax register (includes housing tax register)
FR, LV, NL, NO, CH
education register DK 1
integrated register based on several administrative sources
DK, AT
Germany adopts the central register of foreigners but Eurostat considers this as demographic register

7. Weighting procedure
Variables on which post-stratification / calibration constraints are imposed by country
Type of variables
Countries
Answers
variables on the labour status directly collected from respondents (through the LFS interview)
variables on the labour status derived from information/variables collected from respondents
variables on the labour status added to your national dataset, that you derive from the non-demographic administrative data
DK, LV, NL, AT, FI, SE, NO, CH 8
other variables
DK, FR, NO, SE 4
Denmark: registered unemployment, income, socio-economic status and education;
France: demographic and households characteristics;
Sweden: all variables used in the auxiliary information for the estimation process;
Norway: the auxiliary variables from employment and tax registers.

8. Conclusions
The consultation has produced further information on practices concerning the use of non-demographic administrative data in the LFS. Use of non-demographic administrative data in the LFS is becoming increasingly important because a relevant number of countries is already using such data or is planning to use them in the near future. NO country directly calibrates a variable determining the ILO labour status to match non-demographic administrative data. The calibration and weighting steps do hence not affect the correct survey measurement of the ILO labour status.

9. Conclusions (continued)
Exchange of Views: "Do you agree with the description of the situation in your country as reported in the document?"
29 countries agree;
2 countries (BE, FR) propose a clarification which will be implemented in the new version of the document.

10. Thank you for your attention