Organisation Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) 

National Accounts and Economic Statistics Department

Short-term Economic Statistics Directorate

Unit OCC/A 

Istat - Italian National Institute of Statistics

Via Tuscolana, 1788 - 00173 Rome - Italy

Indices of volumes of hours worked (STSIND, STSCONS, STSRTD, STSSERV).

NACE Rev. 2

Activities covered: Nace Rev.2 divisions 08-36; section F; division 47; divisions 45-46 and sections H, I, J, M_STS, N_STS

Size classes covered: Enterprises with at least one employee.

Hours worked are defined in coherence with Commission Regulation (EC)  No 1503/2006.

Reporting and observation unit is enterprise

All enterprises with at least one employee which were active in the reference quarter in the STS economic activities. In 2013, these enterprises were  1.174 millions (average for all quarters).

The whole country.

The series start in 2000Q1.

2010

Indices with base year 2010=100.

Quarter

None. (Data are not sent to OECD, UN, etc. or used in reports sent to these institutions). 

Links to legal acts on the production of official statistics and confidentiality can be found on the Sistan - National Statistical System website (http://www.sistan.it).

Divisions ‘05’, ‘06’, ’07, ‘09’, ‘12’ are considered confidential because each of them includes very few firms. Therefore the series on these divisions are not transmitted to Eurostat. However, the data of firms belonging to these divisions are used to calculate higher level aggregates. 

At the moment the data are not released.

At the moment the data are not released.

Data are transmitted to Eurostat via Edamis.

Quarterly

At the moment the data are not released.

Not availalbe

At the moment the data are not released.

At the moment the data are not released.

Data are trasmitted to Eurostat quarterly, within the 90 day regulation deadline, in Gesmes format.

As indicated below in 20.1, volumes of hours worked in 1+ employee firms are calculated multiplying per capita hours worked on 10+ employee firms by the number of jobs in 1+ employee firms.

There are no methodological publication describing the method employed to calculate volumes of hours worked in 1+ employee firms.

However, the methods used to calculate per capita hours worked on 10+ employee firms are described in the following publication: M. Sorrentino et al 'Verso la modernizzazione della produzione delle statistiche congiunturali sull’input di lavoro: il processo di integrazione tra la rilevazione mensile sulle grandi imprese e quella trimestrale sui posti vacanti e le ore lavorate”, Istat, Working Papers 

Not availalbe.

The data are produced in accordance with the European Statistics Code of Practice and with its Italian version (http://www3.istat.it/istat/attivita/codice_statistica.pdf).

A specific assessment of data quality for each quality dimension is presented below. There are no relevant quality problems that deserve mentioning here.  

Eurostat is the main user. The produced data are coherent with the requests of the STS regulation. 

The data are considered satisfying the STS regulation requests by Eurostat. 

All STS requirements are fulfilled. 

As the HOWK series are calculated by multiplying survey based per capita hours worked by administrative based jobs, sampling errors affect HOWK via per capita hours worked. Their calculation at the moment is not carried out.

For what concerns non sampling errors, response rates can be found below in 14.3, while descriptions of models used in editing and imputation and grossing up can be found below in 20.5. Coverage errors affect the per capita hours worked because the surveys’ reference and study population differ due to the enterprises beginning and finishing their activities in the reference population between the SBR reference year and the surveys reference quarter. If these errors are measured via the difference between the SBR used by the survey and the OROS (see below, type of source, 20.5) list for the reference quarters, for 2012:

- 9.4% of firms in the surveys’ reference SBR were not in the OROS list for the reference quarters, and

- 21.0% of firms in the OROS list for the reference quarters were not in the surveys’ reference SBR.

As the HOWK series are calculated by multiplying survey based per capita hours worked by number of jobs (administrative source), sampling errors affect HOWK via per capita hours worked.

Concerning survey on per capita hours worked, in the four quarters of 2013 the coefficient of variation is estimated as ranging between 0.2 and 2.1% for the numerator and between 0.2 and 1.6% for the denominator at the section level in the Nace sections covered by the STS regulation. 

On coverage errors, see 14.1.

Data for 2012 have been transmitted to Eurostat on average 81 days after the end of the reference quarter, that is 9 days before the regulation deadline.

Hours worked by self-employed are not included. On all other aspects, hours worked are defined in coherence with Commission Regulation (EC)  No 1503/2006. The data cover the entire national territory.

The 2000-2003 data are based on data collected through LES only (and not also through VELA) and appropriate estimation procedures that make the per capita hours worked that are multiplied by the OROS jobs (see below, type of source, 20.5) representative of all enterprises with 10+ employees.

HOWK data are coherent with those transmitted to Eurostat for STS variables EMPL and WAGE, because the series for all three variables are based on the OROS population of firms active in the reference quarter and measure of jobs.

Data at different aggregation levels are coherent.

For 2012:

-  for LES, the cost of printing and mailing the survey questionnaires was equal to €1,814;

-  for VELA, the cost of printing and mailing the survey questionnaires and of the CATI data collection was equal to €341,235.

Furthermore, it can be estimated that around 5 person hours are needed each quarter to produce the HOWK indicators (from data collection, to data processing and validation).

Under the assumption that around one hour of work is needed to fill in the relevant parts of administrative forms and survey questionnaires by each responding firms each quarter, the burden on respondents can be estimated at around 1.18 million of hours of work per quarter. 

The data are provisional at the time of the first transmission to Eurostat. A revision of the data is carried out yearly with the dissemination of the indices of the first quarter for the period covering the previous 8 quarters.

If errors are identified during the year:

-          if they are considered relevant, the series are re-calculated and resent as soon as possible;

-          if they are considered less relevant, the series are re-calculated and resent together with the following regular revision, that is with the data for the first quarter of the year.

So far, data comparisons with other sources has never led to revisions.

The revisions carried out once a year are due to late respondents in the survey and administrative sources.

A vintage database of all releases is also available.

In June 2014 revisions for 2012 and 2013 have been transmitted together with the data for 2014Q1.

On the raw indices, the average revisions with respect to the previous data transmission were:

-          for 2012:

• at the division level: 0.2
• at the section level: -0.6
• at the MIG level: -0.3

-          for 2013:  

• at the division level: -0.1
• at the section level: -0.5

at the MIG level: -0.5 

Frequency for per capita hours worked (business surveys): for 10-499 employee firms, quarterly;

Frequency for 500+ employee firms, monthly;

Frequency for jobs (administrative source): monthly.

It is carried out through interactive assessment of influential observations, which are identified via both automated procedures and experts’ analyses on aggregate data. 

The files that are sent to Eurostat are produced from data stored in an Oracle database via a generalised Istat software. After their production, they are not checked with any further software or specialized tool. 

See attached file.

Not available