Data Sources

FH BT = NLC Wage Survey
FH REG = NLC unemployment register
FH SREG = NLC unemployment benefit register
FH PROG = NLC Short-term Labour Market Forecast Survey
KSH = Table compiled from regular publications
KSH IMS = CSO institution-based labour statistics
KSH MEF = CSO Labour Force Survey
KSH MEM = CSO Labour Force Account
MC = Microcensus
MNB = Hungarian National Bank
NSZ = Population Census
NYUFIG = Pension Administration
OM STAT = Ministry of Education, Educational Statistics
TB = Social security records

Description of the Main Data Sources

1. CSO Labour Force Survey

The Hungarian Central Statistical Office has been conducting a new statistical survey since January 1992 – using the experience of the pilot survey carried out in 1991 – to obtain ongoing information on the labour force status of the Hungarian population. The Labour Force Survey (LFS) is a household survey which provides quarterly information on the non-institutional population aged 15–74. The aim of the survey is to observe employment and unemployment according to the international statistical recommendation based on the concepts and definitions recommended by the ILO independently from the existing national labour regulations or their changes.
In international practice, the labour force survey is a widely used statistical tool to provide simultaneous, comprehensive and systematic monitoring of employment, unemployment and underemployment. The survey techniques minimise the subjective bias in classification (since people surveyed are classified by strict criteria) and provide freedom to also consider national characteristics.
In the LFS the population surveyed is divided into two main groups according to the economic activity performed by them during the reference week (the week running from Monday to Sunday which contains the 12th day of the month):
– economically active persons (labour force) and
– economically inactive persons.
The group of economically active persons consists of those being in the labour market either as employed or unemployed during the reference week.
The definitions used in the survey follow the ILO recommendations. According to this those designated employed are persons aged 15–74 who, during the reference week:
– worked one hour or more for pay, profit or payment in kind in a job or in a business (including on a farm),
– worked one hour or more without payment in a family business or on a farm (i.e. unpaid family workers),
– had a job from which they were temporarily absent during the survey week.
Persons on child-care leave are classified according to their activity. Conscripts are considered as economically active persons, exceptions are marked in the footnotes of the table.
From the survey’s point of view the activities below are not considered as work:
– work done without payment for another household or institute (voluntary work),
– building or renovating of an own house or flat,
– housework,
– work in the garden or on own land for self-consumption.
Unemployed persons are persons aged 15–74 who:
– were without work, i.e. neither had a job nor were at work (for one hour or more) in paid employment or self-employment during the reference week
– had actively looked for work at any time in the four weeks up to the end of the reference week,
– were available for work within two weeks following the reference week or were waiting to start a new job within 30 days.
Active job search includes: contacting a public or private employment office to find a job, applying to an employer directly, inserting or answering advertisements, asking friends, relatives or other methods.
The labour force (i.e. economically active population) comprises employed and unemployed persons.
Persons are defined economically inactive (i.e. not in the labour force) if they were neither employed nor unemployed, as defined.
Passive unemployed (known as “discouraged persons” according to the ILO concepts) are persons aged 15–74 who desire a job but have given up any active search for work, because they do not believe that they are able to find any.
The Labour Force Survey is based on a multi-stage stratified sample design. The stages of sampling are defined as follows: primary sampling units (PSUs) are enumeration districts (EDs) and secondary sampling units (SSUs) are dwellings in settlements with 15,000 or more inhabitants, while PSUs are settlements, SSUs are EDs and ultimate sampling units are dwellings in all other cases.
The sampling frame or address register of the LFS consists of 12,775 sample units (SUs), covers 751 settlements of the country, and contains about 626,000 addresses. The quarterly sample of the LFS is selected from the address register. From each of the 12,775 SU’s, three addresses are selected by simple random sampling. The interviewers visit one address in each SU during one month. The main indicators of the labour market are representative for regions.
The LFS sample is basically a sample of dwellings, and in each sampled dwelling, labour market information is collected from each household and from each person aged 15–74 living there. For 1998, the quarterly sample contains about 32,000 households and 65,000 persons. The sample has a simple rotation pattern: any household entering the sample at some time is expected to provide labour market information for six consecutive quarters, then leaves the sample permanently. The samples of two consecutive periods tend to be less than 5/6, which would be obtained at a 100 per cent response rate.
In the LFS sample design strata are defined in terms of geographic units, size categories of settlements and area types such as city centres, outskirts, etc.

2. CSO Labour Force Accounting Census

Before the publication of the Labour Force Survey the annual Labour Force Account gave a view of the total labour force in the period between the two census.
The Labour Force Account, as its name shows, is a balance-like account which compares the labour supply (human resources) to the labour demand at an ideal moment (1 January). Population is taken into account by economic activity with a differentiation between those of working age and the population outside of the working age.
Source of data: Annual labour survey on employment on 1th January of enterprises with more than 20 employees and of all government institutions, labour force survey, census, tax records and social security records, and company registry. The number of persons employed in small enterprises having a legal entity is based on estimation. Data on unemployment comes from the registration system of the National Employment Service.
Source of the labour force: working age population, active earners out of working age and employed pensioners

3. CSO Institution-Based Labour Statistics

The source of data is the monthly (annual) institutional labour statistical survey. The survey range covers enterprises with at least 5 employees, and public and social insurance and non-profit institutions irrespective of the staff numbers of employees.
The earnings relate to the full-time employees on every occasion. The potential elements of the prevailing monthly average earnings are: basic wages, bonuses, allowances (including miner’s loyalty bonus, any Széchenyi-grant), payments for time not worked, bonuses, premiums, wages and salaries for the 13th and more months.
Net average earnings are calculated by deducting from the gross average earnings the actual personal income tax, employee’s social security contributions , etc., according to the actual rates (i.e. taking into account the threshold concerning the social security contribution).It does not take into account the impact of the new tax allowance related to the number of children. The personal income tax is calculated by the actual withholding rate applied by the employers when paying out monthly earnings.
The difference between the gross and the net (after-tax) income indexes depends on eventual annual changes in the tax table (tax brackets) and in the tax allowances .
The change of net earnings is estimated as the ratio of net income index and the consumer price index above 100 per cent in the same period.
Non-manual workers are persons with occupations classified by the ISCO-88 in major groups 1-4., manual workers are persons with occupations classified in major groups 5-9. since 1st January 1994. Census data were used for the estimation of the employment data in 1980 and 1990. The aggregate economic data are based on national account statistics, the consumer’s and producer’s price statistics and industrial surveys. A detailed description of the data sources are to be found in the relevant publications of the Statistics Office.

4. Unemployment Register Database

The other main source of unemployment data in Hungary – and in most of the developed countries – is the huge database containing so called administrative records which are collected monthly and include the individual data of the registered unemployed.
The register actually contains all job seekers, but out of them, at a given point of time, only those are regarded as registered unemployed who:
– had themselves registered with a local office of the National Employment Office as unemployed (i. e. he/she has got no job but wishes to work, for which they seek assistance from the labour market organisation).
– at the point of time in question (on the closing days of the individual months), the person is not a pensioner or a full-time student, and is ready to co-operate with the local employment office in order to become employed (i. e. he/she accepts the job or training offered to him/her, and keeps the appointments made with the local employment office’s placement officer/counsellor).
If a person included in the register is working under any subsidised employment programme on the closing day, or is a participant of a labour market training programme, or has a short-term, temporary job her/his unemployed status is suspended.
If the client is not willing to co-operate with the local office he/she is removed from the register of the unemployed.
The data – i. e. the administrative records of the register – allow not only for the identification of date related data but also for monitoring flows: inflow as well as outflow.
Based on the records of the labour force needs reported to the Employment Office, the stock and flow data of vacancies are statistically processed each month.
Furthermore, detailed monthly statistics of participation in the different active programmes, number of participants and their inflow and outflow are prepared monthly, based on the support amounts actually paid.
The very detailed monthly statistics – in a breakdown of country, region, county, local employment office service delivery area and community – build on the secondary processing of administrative records that are generated virtually as the rather important and useful “by-products” of the accomplishment of the National Employment Office’s main functions (such as placement services, payment of benefits, active programme support, etc.).
The Employment Office (and its predecessors, i. e. OMK (National Labour Centre), OMMK and OMKMK) has published the key figures of these statistics on a monthly basis since 1989. The more detailed reports which also contain data by local office service delivery area are published by the County/Metropolitan (Budapest) Labour Centres.
The denominators of the unemployment rates calculated for the registered unemployed are the economically active population data published by the Central Statistical Office’s labour market account, and its breakdown by region and county.
The number of the registered unemployed and the registered unemployment rate are obviously different from the figures of the Central Statistical Office’s labour force survey. It is mainly the different conceptual approach and the fundamentally different monitoring/measuring methods that account for this variance.

5. Short-Term Labour Market Forecast Database

At the initiative and under the co-ordination of the Employment Office (and its legal predecessors), the employment organisation has conducted the so called short prognosis survey since 1991, twice a year, in March and September. The survey uses an enormous sample obtained by interviewing over 4,500 employers.
The interview focuses on the companies’ projections of their material and financial processes, their development and human resource plans, and they are also asked about their concrete lay-off or recruitment plans as well as their expected need for any active labour market programmes.
The surveys are processed in a breakdown of service delivery area, county and country, providing useful information at all levels for the planning activities of the employment organisation.
The prognosis survey provides an opportunity and possibility for the counties and Budapest to analyse in greater depth (also using information from other sources) the major trends in their respective labour markets, to make preparations for tackling problems that are likely to occur in the short term, and to effectively meet the ever-changing needs of their clients.
The forecast is only one of the outputs of the short term prognosis. Further very important “by-products” include regular and personal liaison with companies, the upgraded skills of the placement officers and other administrative personnel, enhanced awareness of the local circumstances, and the adequate orientation of labour market training programmes in view of the needs identified by the surveys.
The prognosis surveys are occasionally supplemented with supplementary surveys to obtain some further useful information that is used by researchers and the decision-makers of employment and education/training policy.

6. Wage Survey Database

The Employment Office (and its legal predecessors) has conducted since 1992, once a year, a representative survey to investigate individual wages and earnings. The survey uses an enormous sample and is conducted at the request of the Ministry of Economic Affairs (formerly: Ministry of Labour and Ministry of Social and Family Affairs).
The reference month of data collection is the month of May every year, but for the calculation of the monthly average of irregularly paid benefits (beyond the base wage/salary), the total amount of such benefits received during the previous year is used.
In the competitive sector, initially data collection only covered companies of over 20 persons; in this group it is incumbent on all companies to provide information, but the sample only includes employees born on certain days.
Data collection has covered companies of 10-19 since 1996, and companies of 5-9 have been covered since 1999, where the companies actually involved in data collection are selected at random (ca. 20 per cent) and the selected ones have to provide information about all their full-time employees.
Data on basic wages and earnings structure can only be retrieved from these surveys in Hungary, thus it is practically these huge, annually generated databases that can serve as the basis of the wage reconciliation negotiations conducted by the social partners.
In the budgetary sector all budgetary institutions provide information, regardless of their size, in a way that the decisive majority of the local budgetary institutions – the ones that are included in the TAKEH central payroll accounting system - provide fully comprehensive information, and the remaining budgetary institutions provide information only about their employees who were born on certain days (regarded as the sample).
Data has only been collected on the professional members of the armed forces since 1999.
Prior to 1992, such data collection took place every three years, thus we are in possession of an enormous data base of the years of 1983, 1986 and 1989.
Of the employees included in the sample, the following data are available:
– the sector the employer operates in, headcount, employer’s local unit, type of entity, ownership structure
– employee’s wage category, job, male/female, age, educational background.
Based on the huge databases which include the data by individual, the data is analysed every year in the following way:
Standard data analysis, as agreed upon by the social partners, used for wage reconciliation negotiations (which is received by every confederation participating in the negotiations)
Model calculations to determine the expected impact of the rise of the minimum wage
Analyses to meet the needs of the Wage Policy Department, Ministry of Economic Affairs, for the comparison and presentation of wage ratios (total national economy, competitive sector, budgetary sector, regional volume)
The entire database is adopted every year by the Central Statistical Office, which enables the Office to also provide data for certain international organisations, (e. g. ILO and OECD). The Employment Office also provides regularly special analyses for the OECD.
The database containing the data by individual allows for a.) the analysis of data for groups of people determined by any combination of pre-set criteria, b.) the comparison of real basic wage and earnings, with special regard to the composition of the different groups analysed, as well as c.) the analysis of the spread and differentiation level of the basic wages and earnings.

7. Unemployment Benefit Register

The recipients’ fully comprehensive registry is made up, on the one hand, of the accounting records containing the disbursed unemployment benefits (unemployment benefit, school leavers’ unemployment benefit and pre-retirement unemployment benefit) and, on the other hand, of the so-called master records containing the particulars of benefit recipients. This register allows for the accurate tracking of the recipients’ benefit related events, the exact date of their inclusion in and removal from the system, as well as why they have been removed from it (e. g. got a job, eligibility period expired, were excluded, joined an active labour market programme, etc.)
This huge database allows for reporting for any point of time the detailed data of persons who received benefits on a given day, in a breakdown of country, region, county and local office service delivery area. In order to align these data with the closing day statistics of the registered unemployed, these monthly statistics are also completed by the 20th of each month.
In addition, the monthly statistics also contain information of the so-called temporary recipients, e.g. the number of those who have received benefits on any day of the month between the previous month’s and the given month’s closing day. Of course, data indicating inflows and outflows are reported here.
It is an important and rather useful aspect from a research perspective that, in addition to the standard closing day statistics, groups defined by any criteria can be tracked in the benefit register, e. g. inflow samples can be taken of newly registered persons for different periods, and through tracking them in the registry system the benefit allocation patterns of different cohorts can be compared.
The detailed data of unemployment benefit recipients have been available from the benefit register since January 1989. The first two years had a different benefit allocation system, and the current system, which has been modified several times since then, was implemented by the Employment of 1991 (Act IV).
For the period of between 1991 and 1996, the register also contains the stock and flow data of the recipients of school leavers’ unemployment benefit. Since 1997 the system has also contained the recipients of pre-retirement unemployment benefit.
In addition to headcount data, the benefit register can also monitor the average duration of the period of benefit allocation and the average monthly amount of the benefits allocated.
The key data regarding benefits are published by the Employment Office in the monthly periodical Labour Market Situation. In addition, time series data is published annually in the Time Series of the Unemployment Register, always covering the last six years in the form of a monthly breakdown.

8. HCSO Census Data

The largest data collection of the Central Statistical Office is the population and housing census, covering the entire population of the country. The reference date of the last census was 0 o’clock on February 1, 2001. The census data published refer to this survey, though regarding the most important characteristics, with the help of the data of the 1980 and the 1990 census respectively, it is possible to study the changes occurred in the last decades. The data of the previous censuses – within certain limits – have been adjusted according to the concepts of the last census (e.g. the data on employment, employers of the 1980 and the 1990 census are reflecting to the definitions, registers of 2001).
The data refer to the resident population of the census in general, while in some cases to the respective groups of population (e.g. persons in employment, engaged in non-agricultural activities, aged 15 years and older). Resident population of the census means the group of persons staying in fact on the place of the enumeration, those who live their everyday life there, can be contacted on the given address, spend most of their night-rests on that place, go to work or to school from that place. This grouping is basically in line with the concept of resident population of the 1980 and 1990 censuses, where the intent for the official registration had been regarded as a matter of fact of a valid official registration. The census 1990 defined the resident population on the basis of the registered addresses (of the population).
As far as the economic activity of the population is concerned, the census applies the concepts of the International Labour Organization (ILO), while – due to the limits in the size and time of the enumeration – the issue of unemployment cannot be studied as deeply as the continuous labour survey does it. In the frame of the labour force survey the unemployment rate is based on a well-defined set of data, by putting on several related questions. A person for example, spending the term of notice at his employer is regarded as person in employment even if he declares himself as unemployed. This correction cannot be made in the case of the census, as – due to the limits in scope – the subject of the notice have not been raised. As the information on unemployment in case of the census is based on the biased judgement of the individuals, there might be some differences against the findings of the labour survey.
The grouping system of the occupations at the census 2001 is based on the nomenclature of the Hungarian Standard Classification of Occupations (further FEOR-93), being in force as from 1997. As to basic principles and structure, it follows the international classification of occupations, ISCO-88 (Rev. 3.), and classifies the occupations into the same 10 major groups. In some tables “legislators, senior government officials, leaders of interest groups and managers of firms” and “professionals” are grouped together as “leaders, intellectuals”, “technicians and associate professionals” and “office and management (customer service) clerks” are grouped together as “other non-manual workers”. In the same tables the group of “craft and related trades workers” include “plant and machine operators and assemblers, vehicle drivers” too, while the group “other occupations” contains elementary occupations and armed forces together.
The classification of the employers or economic activities corresponds to the Hungarian Standard Industrial Classification (TEÁOR) of 1998.