Comparability

Comparability - geographical

Regulation (EC) No 450/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 February 2003 concerning the labour cost index ensures a high degree of comparability between the indices of the member countries.

Comparability over time

In 2008 Eurostat changed from using Industry Classification NACE Rev. 1.2 to NACE Rev. 2. Because of this, there is a slight change in the data belonging to the the private sector starting from 2008, which was also conveyed in the publications of the statistics.. Before this change, the data included the class of industries C-F according to NACE Rev. 1.2. After the change, the sectors of economic activity covered are B-N according to NACE Rev. 2.

Coherence - cross domain

The data material used to produce the Danish labour cost index is also used in the production of the index of average earnings of enterprises and organizations in Denmark. As a consequence the two indices are to some extent comparable. But it should be noted that the concept of labour costs used for the Danish labour cost index differ from the concept and content of hourly earnings in the index of average earnings. The estimated changes in the hourly labour costs and the hourly earnings are therefore not directly comparable.

Coherence - internal

Since the Danish labour costs stems from two different sources, the enterprises pay-roll systems and their accounting systems, data does not rest on full coherence like is the case with the index of average earnings.