Job counting from employment and unemployment to work and labour - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Job counting – from employment and unemployment to work and labour underutilization

Kieran Walsh, Senior Statistician, International Labour Organisation

Limitations of statistics using 1982 standards

• Employment covered both paid and unpaid work (in theory)
• In practice countries adapted coverage to national context
• Difficult to interpret international comparisons
• Imperfect link to employment policy (plus gender bias etc).

Source: ILOSTAT

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

% of Working age population

Employment to population ratio by country (ILOSTAT, latest year available)

Limitations of statistics using 1982 standards (2)

• Unemployment insufficient to reflect all different situations of

labour underutilization

• Also not reacting as expected in face of crises
• Need to develop wider set of indicators to supplement the

unemployment rate

• Based on country experiences (e.g. U1 to U6 in the US)

New Standards – 19th ICLS in 2013

• Employment is one form of work (work done for

pay or profit)

• Also own-use production work, volunteer work,

unpaid trainee work

• Recognition that people can be doing multiple

forms of work in the same time period

Wider definition of ‘work’ with multiple forms of work

• Unemployed
• Unemployed plus time related underemployed
• Unemployed plus ‘potential labour force’
• Composite rate including all components

4 proposed labour underutilization indicators (including unemployment rate)

Illustration: Old versus new standards

4,668.4 288.5 339.7 2,008.1 3,011.6 570.2 632.5 3,372.1 1,447.2 3,590.3 0.0 500.0 1,000.0 1,500.0 2,000.0 2,500.0 3,000.0 3,500.0 4,000.0 4,500.0 5,000.0 Employed Time-related underemployed Unemployed Not Economically Active Potential labour force Subsistence foodstuff producers

000's

Labour Market Estimates, Rwanda, Old and New Standards, 2017

Old Standards New Standards

Illustration: Old versus new standards – subsistence foodstuff producers

1423.7 376.4 1,060.4 729.8 1,587.9 256.2 386.9 1,195.1

500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500

Employed (through non-subsistence work) Unemployed Potential Labour Force Others outside the Labour Force

000's

Labour market status by participation in subsistence work, new standards, Rwanda 2017

Subsistence foodstuff producers Non-subsistence foodstuff producers

Illustration: Labour underutilization Composite indicator (LU4)

Source: ILO calculations based on national data (2011)

ILO Department of Statistics and ITC-ILO

Illustration: Labour Underutilization components

2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 12000 14000 16000 18000

1994Q1 1994Q3 1995Q1 1995Q3 1996Q1 1996Q3 1997Q1 1997Q3 1998Q1 1998Q3 1999Q1 1999Q3 2000Q1 2000Q3 2001Q1 2001Q3 2002Q1 2002Q3 2003Q1 2003Q3 2004Q1 2004Q3 2005Q1 2005Q3 2006Q1 2006Q3 2007Q1 2007Q3 2008Q1 2008Q3 2009Q1 2009Q3 2010Q1 2010Q3 2011Q1 2011Q3 2012Q1 2012Q3 2013Q1 2013Q3 2014Q1 2014Q3 2015Q1 2015Q3 2016Q1 2016Q3 2017Q1 2017Q3 2018Q1 2018Q3 2019Q1 2019Q3

United States of America - Labour Underutilization, 1994 to 2019

Potential Labour Force Unemployment Time Related Underemployment

Illustration: Labour Underutilization components

50 100 150 200 250

Labour Underutilization - United States of America, 2008 to 2011 (Q12008=100)

Potential Labour Force Unemployment Time related underemployment

What next?

• Mainstreaming of regular measurement and dissemination

using the latest standards

• Also expand our frameworks on characteristics of work

people do

• More meaningful description of work relationships,

formality etc.

• Particularly important as policies for formalisation are

being counterbalanced by increasingly informal work arrangements (gig-economy) and various other phenomenon