Integrating Seasonal Adjustment Approaches of Official Surveys on Labor Supply and Demand

Abstract

This paper illustrates the application of the indirect seasonal adjustment approach to the index series of hours worked per capita from the Istat VELA survey, which is currently seasonally adjusted using the direct approach instead. The experience already gained during the Istat LFS allowed us to test the reliability of the indirect approach on the VELA series. In this case, the use of the indirect approach was twofold: firstly, the seasonally adjusted index series was obtained by seasonally adjusting the series of hours and the series of the employed separately and then relating them. Secondly, for the numerator, as well as for the denominator, the different series disaggregated by the variables of interest were seasonally adjusted separately.

Keywords

• seasonal adjustment
• direct approach
• indirect approach
• per capita hours worked indicator