Report on the implementation of Regulation (EC) No 450/2003 concerning the labour cost index (LCI)

Regulation (EC) No 450/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 February 2003 concerning the labour cost index (LCI) sets a common framework for Member States to produce comparable indices and provide them to the Commission. The Commission (Eurostat) publishes a quarterly news release on the hourly labour cost index on its website which contains a complete data set, broken down by economic activity and by the components of labour costs. The website also includes both quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth rates [see Related URL].

Under Article 13 of Regulation (EC) No 450/2003, the Commission shall submit a report every two years to the European Parliament and the Council. As back series were analysed in previous reports, the present report examines the quality of the labour cost index data for the reference quarters ranging from third quarter 2014 (2014Q3) to second quarter 2016 (2016Q2).

The previous report addressed progress on accessibility and clarity and considered them satisfactory. This report will therefore focus on improvements made in relevance, completeness, punctuality, accuracy, comparability and will review the consistency between the labour cost index data and the national accounts. Particular attention is given to the problem of data not being provided by Member States within the deadlines set, and the consequences for the quality of the published European aggregates.

Eurostat: Labour Market: Labour Costs http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/labour-market/labour-costs

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