Labour statistics published by the OECD cover a broad range of annual, quarterly and monthly indicators including employment, unemployment, labour compensation (hourly earnings, unit labour cost), vacancies, and labour disputes.

Labour statistics are used extensively by government analysts for both the development of labour market programmes and monitoring the performance of those programmes. The demand is for labour statistics that enable assessment of the “quality” jobs being created. This requires information on temporary/part-time employment, earnings and wages, age/gender profiles, employment by sector.

In recent years there has been increased use of household labour force surveys as the main vehicle for statistical data collection, though establishment surveys continue to be important, particularly for detailed data by economic sector. For cost/timeliness reasons, wide use is made of administrative data, particularly in the measurement of the number of registered unemployed and job vacancies.

Given the trend towards increased international co-ordination of policy initiatives, greater emphasis on internationally comparable definitions and treatments are emerging. Extensive work in the formulation of guidelines and recommendations has been done by the International Conference of Labour Statisticians in many areas of labour statistics. These guidelines are published on the ILO website.