11.01 Certain comparisons between countries, or between industries or sectors within the same economy, become meaningful only when the aggregates in the national accounts (for example, gross domestic product, the final consumption of households, the value added of an industry, compensation of employees) are considered in relation to the number of inhabitants and labour input variables. It is therefore necessary to have definitions of the total population, employment, jobs, total hours worked, full-time equivalence and employee labour input at constant compensation, which are closely linked to the concepts used in the national accounts.
11.02 These titles are defined in the system on the basis of the concepts of economic territory and centre of interest.
11.03 Labour inputs must be classified on the basis of the same statistical units as used for the analysis of production, namely the local kind-of-activity unit and the institutional unit.
11.04 The aggregates to which the figures for population and labour inputs are related are annual totals. Therefore, average population and labour inputs during the year should be used.
When inquiries are conducted at several times during the course of the year, the figure taken is the average of the results obtained on these various dates.
When a single inquiry is made, it is important to examine if the period used is fully representative; the last available information on variations throughout the year should be used in estimating data for the year as a whole. For example, when estimating the mean employment, some allowance should be made for the fact that certain people do not work throughout the whole year (casual and/or seasonal workers).