Harmonised unemployment versus registered unemployment

• Author: Litra A.V.
• Pages: 177-184

Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov

Series V: Economic Sciences • Vol. 10 (59) No. 1 - 2017

Harmonised unemployment versus registered

unemployment

Adriana Veronica LITRA1

Abstract: The article aims to contribute to the clarifying of the differences and the

complementarities between the two main official methods of measuring unemployment,

which provide results regarding "harmonised unemployment" (issued by the Labour Force

Survey – LFS, according to the International Labour Organization – ILO – definition), and

figures regarding "registered unemployment" (provided by the Public Employment Services,

according to different national definitions and regulations.

Key-words: harmonised unemployment, registered unemployment, ILO

1. Introduction

In Romania, as well in the other EU countries, measuring and reporting

unemployment is made by using two different tools:

1) by completing a questionnaire, a representative sample of the population

participates at Labour Force Survey, with respect to International Labour Office

criteria to defining the unemployed status, resulting the harmonised

unemployment, a common tool for all member states of the EU which let the

possibility of international labour market statistics.

2) by registering al the local Public Employment Agencies, the unemployed

persons provide information regarding their number, their characteristics, the type of

job they are looking for, the time until they find one, etc. Their voluntary

registration brings them the advantage to receive unemployment benefit and

assistance in finding a job, but also allows the society to outline the dimension of the

registered unemployment phenomenon.

Different as definition, methodology, coverage, these tools provide different

outcomes as well.

1 Transilvania University of Braşov, adriana.litra@unitbv.ro