Topic 2 Finding information about the labour market
- EUROPEAN UNION LABOUR FORCE SURVEY (EU LFS)
- The EU Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS) is conducted in all EU Member States of the European Union, 4 EU candidate countries and 3 European Free Trade Association (EFTA) countries. It is a large household sample survey providing quarterly results on labour participation of people aged 15 and over as well as on people outside the labour force. All definitions apply to persons aged 15 years and over living in private households. Those doing military or community service are not included in the survey, as is also the case for those in institutions/collective households.
🡪Labour Force Surveys of different- countries can be found here.
🡪Labour Force Surveys of differentThe principal European source for information on the labour market is the European Union’s (EU’s) labour force survey (LFS) — see below for more information. Looking at the population aged 15 years and over, the results of this survey classify people living in private households into three main groups:
- Employed;
- Unemployed;
- Those outside the labour force (sometimes called economically inactive, a term which is gradually being changed).
People who are employed and people who are unemployed are together referred to as the labour force. People who are not working and who are not looking for work; they are referred to the population outside the labour force and include, among others, (non-working) students, people who stay at home with family responsibilities or retired people.
🡪 This video explains labour market concepts
Skills-OVATE platform
Skills-OVATE offers detailed information on the jobs and skills employers demand based on online job advertisements (OJAs) in 28 European countries. It is powered by Cedefop’s and Eurostat’s joint work in the context of the Web Intelligence Hub. Please visit the project page to find out the latest news and publications in the OJA work.
In Skills-OVATE you can access information based on millions of OJAs collected from thousands of sources, including private job portals, public employment service portals, recruitment agencies, online newspapers and corporate websites.
To show up-to-date labour market and skills trends, Skills-OVATE presents data for the last 4 available quarters and is updated four times a year. Yearly averages for key variables are available via Cedefop’s dedicated skills intelligence platform.
