PURPOSE: to establish a common framework for systematic production of high quality European Union labour market statistics on businesses.
PROPOSED ACT: Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council.
ROLE OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT: the European Parliament decides in accordance with the ordinary legislative procedure and on an equal footing with the Council.
BACKGROUND: labour market statistics on businesses in the European Union are required for the design, implementation and evaluation of the Union policies, in particular those addressing economic, social and territorial cohesion, the European employment strategy, the European Pillar of Social Rights and the European Semester.
Labour market statistics on businesses on the level and structure of labour costs have been collected since 19591, with a periodicity of 2 to 4 years based on specific legislation for each data collection, and covered different economic sectors (industry, wholesale and retail distribution, road transport, banking and insurance, services).
The evaluation conducted by the Commission has shown that the current legal framework of Council Regulation (EC) No 530/1999 and Regulations (EC) No 450/2003 and (EC) No 453/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council has significantly improved labour market statistics on businesses overall. Some limitations of the statistics that were recognised already at the time of adoption of the legal acts (missing parts of the economy) became more salient as EU policies developed, and their monitoring required more precise indicators.
The lack of a legal obligation to provide annual information on the gender pay gap has become more problematic. Another weakness of the current legal framework is that it does not capture significant actors of the EU economy, such as micro firms. In addition, there is room for improving the timeliness and frequency of labour market statistics on businesses data. Lastly, the legal architecture could be simplified by replacing the three framework regulations currently in force with one consolidated text to ensure full harmonisation and consistency across all labour market statistics on businesses data collections.
CONTENT: the proposed regulation lays down a new framework for European labour statistics on businesses. It integrates current statistics on the structure and distribution of earnings and labour costs, the labour cost index, job vacancies and the gender pay gap. It also specifies that Member States must provide statistics on 3 domains (earnings, labour costs, labour demand), 5 related topics and 20 detailed topics.
These statistics are supported by articles on the subject matter, definitions, data sources and methods (including specific enablers for the reuse of administrative data sources), data requirements, early estimates, statistical population and units, ad hoc data requirements, quality requirements and quality reporting, pilot and feasibility studies, and potential financial contributions.
The details of data requirements will be specified in implementing acts, but the proposed regulation makes it possible to amend the list of detailed topics and their periodicity, reference periods and data transmission deadlines by delegated acts.
The proposal also provides for the possibility to respond to upcoming data requirements with ad hoc data collections.
Lastly, the proposed regulation offers potential co-financing to further modernise statistical production systems and carry out pilot and feasibility studies as appropriate.