Quarterly statistics on Community job vacancies

2007/0033(COD)

Article 10 of the Job Vacancy Statistics Regulation (Regulation (EC) No 453/2008) requires the Commission to report to the European Parliament and the Council on its implementation by 24 June 2010 and every three years thereafter.

Job vacancy statistics (JVS) correspond to the part of labour demand that is not met by labour supply and thus provide key information on the size and structure of labour market mismatches.

This is the third report presented by the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council. It draws on experience of providing data at quarterly intervals and on documentation provided by Member States in their annual quality reports.

To complement the general framework established by Regulation (EC) No 453/2008, the Commission adopted two implementing Regulations:

  • Commission Regulation (EC) No 1062/2008, which defines the seasonal adjustment procedures to be applied from the first quarter of 2014, the structure and content of the annual quality reports which the Member States are to supply to the Commission, and the dates on which these reports are to be sent;
  • Commission Regulation (EC) No 19/2009, which defines the term ‘job vacancy’, sets deadlines for sending data and specifies the periods to be covered by the first set of data supplied.

The main conclusions of the report are as follows:

  • since the second report presented to the European Parliament and the Council in 2013, much progress has been made on implementing JVS legislation and collecting sound statistics on job vacancies. All Member States except Belgium, Finland and Sweden now provide seasonally adjusted data for both job vacancies and occupied posts which are published regularly by Eurostat. Eurostat intends to publish seasonally adjusted data for European aggregates in the second half of 2016;
  • Job Vacancy Statistics data have been supplied in good time and European aggregates have been published as scheduled, although there is scope for further progress in timeliness in years to come. In general, the European aggregates published, for both the flash and final estimates, have been subject to minor revisions;
  • Eurostat started publishing a quarterly news release on job vacancy rates. This new publication gives greater prominence to JVS and has been well received by users. However, some of these, including the European Central Bank, said there was a need for the four Member States which did not yet cover the economy as a whole (Denmark, France, Italy and Malta) to do so. They also requested that the number of vacancies and the job vacancy rate be published for all Member States, the euro area and the European Union;
  • incomplete coverage is still the main reason why JVS data are not used more widely. It is vital for all Member States to fully cover the public sector and small businesses in their quarterly estimates. Improved coverage would also enable the number of vacancies for the European aggregates to be published.

The Commission examined whether, in the light of the feasibility studies, a new legislative proposal could be envisaged that would extend the coverage of job vacancy data for countries that do not include the public sector and/or small businesses. It was concluded that such a review should take place in the broader context of revising of EU business statistics legislation (future Framework Regulation on Integrated Business Statistics project - FRIBS).