Methodology description of the labour force sample survey                  

SWEDEN 1990

Labour Force Survey (LFS)
Survey has been conducted since May 1956.

Responsibility for methodology, organization and implementation:
Swedish Statistical Office, Labour Force- and Education Statistics Unit

• geographical: whole territory
• persons covered: all persons aged 16-64 (including those who are institutionalized, long term, sick or working abroad

The survey is conducted on a quarterly basis - 2 weeks every month
(from 1993 on every week).

The calendar week (Monday to Sunday).

The employed
All persons aged 16-64 who during the reference week did minimally 1 hour work for a wage, salary or income in kind.
Included are also persons who within the reference period were temporarily out of work, but they were in a formal link with their employment, and also the self-employed, i.e. all employers, own account workers and all members of production and agricultural co-operatives and unpaid family workers.

The unemployed
All persons aged 16-64 who fulfilled in parallel the following conditions during the reference period :

• they were out of work; they were neither in paid employment nor self-employed,
• they were actively looking for work - or would have been if they were not temporarily prevented to look for work during the ref.week - in one of the following ways:

1. at an labour office;
2. looking for the job directly in enterprises;
3. using advertisements, or any other way

• they were prepared within the reference week to start paid employment or self-employment.
• people on lay-off (in the SW90LES-file people on lay-off defined are considered as employed. In the SW90STD-file (according to EUROSTATs concepts and definitions)people on lay-off are classified as unemployed). If the persons do not fulfill at least one of these  conditions, they are classified as employed or economically non-active.

Labour force
Includes all persons aged 16-64 who fulfill the requirements to be classified as employed or unemployed.

The economically non-active population (persons outside the labour force) are all persons, who were not employed during the reference period and are not at present economically active (persons attending various education institutions, conscripts, old-age pensioners, the long-term sick or disabled persons and the like).

The under-employed are all persons in paid employment or persons working in their own firm, regardless whether they were or not in work, who worked unvoluntarily shorter working hours than usual in the given activity and who during the reference period, were looking or prepared for work.

The sample consists of 3 separate samples, one of each month within the quarter, each consisting of about 18.000 persons.

Eight rotation groups. Each group participates every 3 months, on a total of eight occasions and is then replaced. Each group participates during two consecutive months, does not participate during one month, participates again during two months. The procedure is repeated during the corresponding months in the following year, and the group is then replaced.

• There is a press release 2-3 weeks after the end of the reference month.
• Results from LFS - LFS BASIC TABLES - are published monthly, quaterly and anually by SCB in "Statistiska medelanden" (SM) - subgroup AM".
• Also in "Alm„nn m†nadsstatistik" (general monthly statistics), "Statistisk †rsbok" (Statistical yearbook).