“Do the Germans Really Work Six Weeks More than the French?” – Measuring Working Time with the Labour Force Survey in France and Germany

Körner Thomas () and Wolff Loup ()
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Körner Thomas: Federal Statistical Office Germany, 65180 Wiesbaden, Germany.
Wolff Loup: Ministére de la culture et de la communication, 182 rue Saint Honoré, 75033 Paris cedex 01.

Journal of Official Statistics, 2016, vol. 32, issue 2, 405-431

Abstract: Measuring working time is not only an important objective of the EU Labour Force Survey (LFS), but also a highly demanding task in terms of methodology. Against the background of a recent debate on the comparability of working time estimates in France and Germany, this article presents a comparative assessment of the measurement of working time in the Labour Force Survey obtained in both countries. It focuses on the measurement of the hours actually worked, the key working-time concept for short-term economic analysis and the National Accounts. The contribution systematically analyses the differences in the measurement approaches used in France and Germany in order to identify the methodological effects that hinder comparability. It comes to the conclusion that the LFS overstates the difference in hours actually worked in France and Germany and identifies question comprehension, rounding, editing effects, as well as certain aspects of the sampling design, as crucial factors of a reliable measurement in particular of absences from work during the reference week. We recommend continuing the work started in the European Statistical System towards the development of a model questionnaire in order to improve cross-national harmonisation of key variables such as hours actually worked.

Keywords: Nonsampling errors; measurement error; questionnaire design; working hours; international comparability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:vrs:offsta:v:32:y:2016:i:2:p:405-431:n:10

DOI: 10.1515/jos-2016-0022

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