11.32 Definition:
Full-time equivalent employment, which equals the number of full-time equivalent jobs, is defined as total hours worked divided by the average annual number of hours worked in full-time jobs within the economic territory.
11.33
This definition does not necessarily describe how the concept is estimated:
since the length of a full-time job has changed through time and differs between
industries, methods which establish the average proportion and average hours of
less than full-time jobs in each job group have to be used. A normal full time
week must first be estimated in each job group. If possible, a job group can
be defined, inside an industry, according to sex and (or) kind of work of
people. Hours contractually agreed upon constitute, for employee jobs, the
appropriate criteria for determining those figures. Full-time equivalent is calculated
separately in each job group, then summed.
11.34
In spite of the fact that total hours worked are the best measure of labour
inputs, there are some advantages in the full-time equivalence: it can be
estimated more easily and this facilitates international comparisons with countries
which can only estimate full-time equivalent employment.