KILM 4th Edition - the latest features

New or improved indicators

• A new harmonized series of labour force participation (KILM tables 1a and 1b) reduces some of the limitations to comparability.
• A new indicator on employment elasticities (KILM 19) allows one to look at the relationship between economic growth and employment.
• An estimate of the working poor is now included among the poverty estimates in table 20.
• The inactivity indicator (KILM 13) now includes all age groups.
• Table 6a, employment by hours worked, now includes all available hour bands (rather than less than 20 and over 40 only).
• The occupational wages indicator (KILM 16) has been expanded from six occupations to a total coverage of 19, thus allowing users to make comparisons of wages in occupations requiring a much broader range of skills. This indicator also has a new series on real wages based on purchasing power parities as a measure of standards of living which serves to make cross-country comparisons easier and more reliable.
• All indicators have improved in terms of geographic coverage and the timeliness of information available, thanks in part to improvements in the processes of collecting and processing labour market information.

Improving the ability to make valid cross-country comparisons

• Unemployment data is now separated by the definition applied for measurement (total unemployment or registered unemployment).
• The software allows users to isolate records that are non-national in coverage, and therefore not strictly comparable to national estimates.
• Parameter fields have been added to the hours of work indicator (KILM tables 6a and 6b) to allow users to select type of hours measured (actual or usual) and jobs covered (all jobs, main job, main and secondary jobs), thus allowing users to select data that match according to definition and measurement applied.
• Many time series have been “cleaned” to eliminate unnecessary breaks in series. This means that, to the greatest extent possible, a time-series for one country, based on one type of source, one methodology, one geographic coverage, etc. will not be interrupted with one year in which the source, methodology, coverage, etc. varies, thus making it incomparable to the rest of the series.

World and regional estimates

• One of the most exciting additions to the KILM 4th Edition is the inclusion of world and regional estimates for the following indicators: labour force participation (KILM 1), employment-to-population ratio (KILM 2), employment by sector (KILM 4), unemployment (KILM 8), youth unemployment (KILM 9), inactivity rate (KILM 13), employment elasticities (KILM 19) and the working poor (KILM 20). The estimates are presented in a box in each manuscript along with an analysis of the global and regional trends.

Improved software capabilities

• In this edition users will be automatically informed of the availability of updates and will see exactly where updates are available (by indicator) before downloading.
• The new software includes a function that allows users to view two indicators together in the same grid.

Improved regional groupings

• The world is not static. As a consequence, regional classifications need to be reviewed and adjusted from time to time to improve validity and comparability with groupings defined by other international organizations. With the inclusion of ten new Member States to the European Union in 2004, it no longer made sense to include these countries in the former “transition economies” grouping nor did it make sense to include them in the former “developed economies” grouping since the level of economic development in some of the countries differed significantly from developed economies such as, say, the United States. The resulting new grouping “Developed Economies and the European Union” served as a compromise. The remaining former transition economies are now grouped within the “Central and Eastern Europe (non-EU) and CIS” region. Another adjustment was made to the “Asia and the Pacific” region. In previous editions, this region was divided according to six subregions (Eastern Asia, South-central Asia, South-eastern Asia, Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia). The subregions have now been streamlined into four: East Asia, Pacific Islands, South Asia and South-East Asia.