Labour market statistics on businesses

The European Parliament adopted a legislative resolution approving without amendment the Council's position at first reading with a view to the adoption of a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on European Union labour market statistics on businesses, repealing Council Regulation (EC) No 530/1999 and Regulations (EC) No 450/2003 and (EC) No 453/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council.

The proposed regulation concerns statistics on wages, labour costs, the gender pay gap and job vacancies in the EU, which the European Statistical System publishes regularly, and aims to improve the comparability of statistics between Member States while ensuring that data on the gender pay gap are collected annually.

The Council's position:

- stipulates that data on minimum wages and collective bargaining in relation to the Minimum Wages Directive should be drawn from currently available data;

- adds a mention of the gender pay gap, specifying that Eurostat can compile total annual and monthly salaries for male and female employees using data from the Structure of Earnings Survey;

- adds a definition of ‘social enterprise’;

- adds clarifications to clarify the notion of ‘data held by the private sector’ and mentions retrospective data, emphasising their importance;

- adds a provision on ‘Sources and methods’ ensuring access to personal data held by private data holders, for the purposes of labour market statistics concerning businesses;

- mentions the need to avoid an additional burden on respondents and the need to carry out EU-funded pilot or feasibility studies before making any proposal for a delegated or implementing act;

- provides that delegated acts may only lay down the frequency, reference periods and deadlines for transmission of detailed topics already included in the Annex for new detailed topics;

- calls on the Commission to regularly review the use and usability of data and to stop using certain variables or detailed themes when they are no longer necessary;

- includes references to a delegated act and an implementing act, devoted in particular to the temporary production of data;

- refers to mandatory funding under the Single Market Programme, supplemented by an indication of the possibility of using funds from the general EU budget;

- provides that a four-year exemption will apply to multi-annual data collections, a two-year derogation to annual collections, while a one-year derogation will apply to quarterly data collections;

- modifies a number of first reference periods, moving them from 2026 to 2027.