Employment plays a central role in most people’s lives. It is a major source to secure the livelihood of individuals and families; it enables participation in social life and for many people is an important precondition for satisfaction and a high quality of life.
The core elements of employment statistics at the Federal Statistical Office are the employment accounts and the microcensus with the labour force survey integrated in it. The two types of statistics, which are based on fundamentally different methods and procedures, provide information about the number of people in employment in Germany. The differences between the methods and procedures used for the statistics are due to their main purposes. At the same time, they are the main reason why the number of persons in employment in the microcensus/labour force survey differs from the relevant result of the employment accounts.
The employment accounts are an integral part of the system of national accounts of the Federal Statistical Office and generally take account of any employment data available. The Federal Statistical Office and the Federal Employment Agency include the number of people in employment in Germany’s total economy in their monthly labour market reports. The quarterly and annual results in a breakdown by economic sector and employment status of the people in employment (employees, self-employed including family workers) are used in the national accounts especially for productivity and other macroeconomic short-term analyses.
The employment results of the labour force survey, which is harmonised across Europe and integrated in the microcensus, are obtained in a household survey covering one percent of Germany’s population every year. In addition to employment data, a wide range of information is collected on labour force participation and other issues like education, income and household composition. Therefore, the microcensus and the labour force survey, which both are household surveys, are especially appropriate for structural comparisons of employment that go beyond the employment accounts and, regarding the labour force survey, for comparisons of the labour market at the European level.
In addition to these two sets of employment statistics of the Federal Statistical Office, we provide a range of basic data from the employment statistics of the Federal Employment Agency on our web pages. The relevant register data provide a full count of the number of employees subject to social insurance contributions in Germany.