Labour Accounts: A Step Forward to a Coherent and Timely Description of the Labour Market

Both the necessity to resolve conflicting data and the wish to describe interrelationships on the
labour market bring about the need for Labour Accounts. Denmark, the Netherlands and Switzerland
have all chosen to develop such a system. Although they are in different stages of development and
have sometimes chosen different solutions for the problems they meet, they all agree on the main
principles underlying these accounts. Developing Labour Accounts gives them new opportunities to
complement, present and improve existing labour statistics. This paper will provide an overview of the
characteristic features of Labour Accounts and will present for each country the framework used for
implementation and the possible policy implications for the future.