Labour Statistics for a Market Economy

Examines the different ways of establishing a new system to monitor employment/unemployment in Eastern/Central Europe and the former Soviet Union. The study reveals Eastern Europe as facing the challenge of collecting statistics in areas where no such tradition exists.

---

The International Labour Office is the moving force behind the adoption of the Labour Force Survey in Western countries as the only reliable means of gathering information about trends in employment and unemployment, and on pay. The countries of East-Central Europe and the former USSR have recognized their need of such statistiics and turned to the ILO to help them set up systems to provide data required by decision makers. This pioneering work shows how the old "command" economies are setting up brand new systems to classify occupations, to measure employment and unemployment, and to collect information on wages and labour costs, which will be useful to students of the area and essential for statisticians world-wide concerned with the challenge of instigating an entirely new statistical service.