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2. Conceptual framework for statistics  on work relationship

Last modified by Helena on 2025/07/31 14:22

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2. Conceptual framework for statistics  on work relationships

49. The proposed conceptual framework for statistics on work relationships uses two aspects of the work relationship as criteria to differentiate categories of jobs and work activities according to status and to arrange them into aggregate groups. These are the type of authority that the worker is able to exercise over the economic unit for which the work is performed and the type of economic risk to which the worker is exposed. 

50. The detailed categories in the revised classification of status in employment (ICSE-18) may be aggregated according to alternative hierarchies, one based on the type of authority and the other on the nature of the economic risk to which the worker is exposed. This allows the production of separate statistics on dependent and independent workers and on those employed for pay and for profit. This latter dichotomy is aligned with the current distinction between paid employment and self-employment. The new terminology more accurately reflects the reality of the situation, especially for dependent workers employed for profit.

51. The concepts used to define the classification of status in employment are also used to define the categories in the proposed ICSaW-18. The detailed categories in ICSE-18 are a subset of those included in ICSaW-18. These classifications by status are complemented by a set of standard cross-cutting variables and categories that provide more detail, allow the identification of specific groups of interest and reflect characteristics that are not covered in the classifications according to status.

Statistical units and work relationships

52. Statistics on the work relationship are concerned with: (a) the authority relationships between persons who work and the economic units in which or for which the work is performed; and (b) the contractual or other conditions in which the work is performed. 

53. The concept of economic unit used in the framework is aligned with the institutional units defined in the 2008 SNA which distinguishes between: 

  • (a) market units (i.e. corporations, quasi-corporations and household unincorporated market enterprises); 
  • (b) non-market units (i.e. government and non-profit institutions serving households); and 
  • (c) households that produce goods or services for own final use (domestic households).

54. Since persons frequently perform work for more than one economic unit, and the nature of their work relationships may differ for each unit, statistics on work relationships refer primarily to characteristics of jobs or work activities in particular economic units. 

Refinement of the definition of job

55. The 19th ICLS resolution I, paragraph 12(b) defines a job or work activity as a set of tasks and duties performed, or meant to be performed, by one person for a single economic unit and goes on to note that:

56. The draft 20th ICLS resolution concerning statistics on work relationships proposes to refine and clarify the definition of job or work activity (see Appendix, paragraph 8) by specifying that for those employed as dependent workers, the set of tasks should be considered to be performed for the economic unit on which the worker is dependent and that a separate job should be defined for each economic unit on which the worker is dependent. A vehicle driver, for example, who accesses clients using two different ride providing agencies (such as Uber and Lyft) will have two different jobs and may be a dependent worker in both jobs. This ensures that dependent workers employed for profit are not classified as independent if the work is performed for more than one entity. It also means that separate jobs are defined in cases where some activities are undertaken on a dependent basis, and others on an independent or freelance basis.

57. A further refinement ensures that separate work activities are defined when a person is engaged in both own-use production of goods and own-use provision of services in the same economic unit. This allows work activities within the SNA production boundary to be separately identified from those work activities that are outside the production boundary. This may also facilitate the production of statistics relevant to issues such as gender segregation in own-use production of goods and services. If a single work activity were defined for both the production of goods and the provision of services, three categories would be required in the classification of status at work, for those who produce services only, goods only, and both goods and services. 

58. Non-standard employment arrangements commonly occur in jobs that are not a person’s main or even second job. The prevalence of these forms of employment may therefore be under-reported, since many household surveys measuring employment only cover a main job, or possibly main plus second job. The resolution therefore notes the importance of measuring work relationships in multiple jobs and work activities in order to measure the prevalence of non-standard employment. While this is recognized as being complex it is a broader challenge facing household surveys measuring labour and not limited to statistics on work relationships. 

59. While the term “worker” is not formally defined in international standards for labour statistics, it may be used in a general sense to refer to any person who works. In the standards for statistics on work relationships it is mainly used to refer to the persons role in the context of a job or work activity in a particular economic unit. The same person may therefore be described as a dependent worker in one job or work activity and an independent worker in another. 

Categorization based on authority and economic risk

60. This section describes the concepts of type of authority and type of economic risk, the relevance of these concepts to different types of jobs and work activity and the way they are used to create dichotomous categories of dependent and independent workers in the case of type of authority, and of workers employed for profit and employed for pay in the case of type of economic risk.

Type of authority

61. The type of authority exercised by the worker is defined in paragraph 11 of the draft resolution and is used to classify jobs and work activities as being independent or dependent and to arrange them into two broad groups: independent workers and dependent workers. Since workers within each of these broad categories may, in practice, have greater or lesser degrees of authority and dependence, there is to a certain extent a continuum between dependent and independent work. 

62. Two aspects of dependence and authority are taken into consideration in the identification of dependent and independent workers: operational dependence and economic dependence. Operational dependence refers to whether the person has control over when and how the work is done, can make the most important decisions about the activities of the business, or is accountable to or supervised by another person or economic unit. Economic dependence refers to whether the worker or another person or economic unit controls access to the market, raw materials and capital items. 

63. Independent workers control the activities of the economic units in which they work, either entirely independently or in partnership with others. They make the most important decisions about the activities of the economic unit and the organization of their work, are not supervised by other workers, nor are they dependent on a single other economic unit or person for access to the market, raw materials or capital items. 

64. Dependent workers do not have complete authority or control over the economic unit in which or for which they work. They include employees, family helpers and dependent contractors.

Type of economic risk

65. Type of economic risk refers to the extent to which the worker may: (1) be exposed to the loss of financial or other resources in pursuance of the activity; and (2) experience unreliability of remuneration in cash or in kind as a result of the work performed, or receive no remuneration. In the case of workers employed for profit and owner-operators of corporations, the exposure to economic risk may result in financial loss but may also provide an enhanced opportunity to increase income and accumulate wealth. 

66. The resolution provides information on the criteria that may be used for operational measurement of economic risk and on the aspects of the nature of the remuneration taken into consideration in order to differentiate workers employed for profit from workers employed for pay. 

67. The concept of economic risk is of less relevance to the determination of specific groups of workers in forms of work other than employment. However, work activities in these other forms of work may also expose those performing these activities to varying degrees of economic risk.

Supporting concepts

68. Definitions of concepts that are used as part of the definition of categories and variables used in the framework are provided below. Many of these concepts are already defined in existing statistical standards such as the 2008 SNA, ISIC Rev.4 or the 19th ICLS standards. Where this is the case they are reproduced here for convenience. 

Institutional and economic units

69. An institutional unit is defined for the purposes of economic statistics as an economic entity that is capable, in its own right, of owning assets, incurring liabilities and engaging in economic activities and transactions with other entities. It may own and exchange goods and assets, is legally responsible for the economic transactions that it carries out and may enter into legal contracts. An important attribute of the institutional unit is that a set of economic accounts exists or can be compiled for the unit. This set of accounts includes consolidated financial accounts and/or a balance sheet of assets and liabilities.

70. Institutional units include persons or groups of persons in the form of households and legal or social entities whose existence is recognized by law or society independently of the persons or other entities that may own or control them.1

71. The term “economic unit” is used in the draft resolution to refer to institutional units as producers or consumers of goods and services, whether or not a set of accounts exists for the unit. More than one economic unit may be defined for each household.

Enterprise

72. An enterprise is defined in ISIC Rev.4 as an institutional unit in its capacity as a producer of goods and services. It is an economic transactor with autonomy in respect of financial and investment decision-making, as well as authority and responsibility for allocating resources for the production of goods and services. It may be engaged in one or more productive activities.

73. An enterprise may be a corporation (or quasi-corporation), a non-profit institution or an unincorporated enterprise. Corporate enterprises and non-profit institutions are complete institutional units. On the other hand, the term “unincorporated enterprise” refers to an institutional unit – a household or government unit – only in its capacity as a producer of goods and services.

Corporation

74. The 2008 SNA treats all entities as corporations if they are:

  • (a) capable of generating a profit or other financial gain for their owners;
  • (b) recognized at law as separate legal entities from their owners who enjoy limited liability; 
  • (c) set up for purposes of engaging in market production. 

75. As well as legally constituted corporations, the term “corporations” is used in the SNA to include cooperatives, limited liability partnerships, notional resident units and quasicorporations. The concept of “corporation” used in statistics on work relationships is more restricted than that used for national accounts purposes. It includes legally constituted corporations, cooperatives and limited liability corporations but excludes quasicorporations owned by households.

Quasi-corporation

76. According to the 2008 SNA a quasi-corporation is:

  • (a) either an unincorporated enterprise owned by a resident institutional unit that has sufficient information to compile a complete set of accounts and is operated as if it were a separate corporation and whose de facto relationship to its owner is that of a corporation to its shareholders; or
  • (b) an unincorporated enterprise owned by a non-resident institutional unit that is deemed to be a resident institutional unit because it engages in a significant amount of production in the economic territory over a long or indefinite period of time.

77. Three main kinds of quasi-corporation are recognized in the 2008 SNA:

  • (a) unincorporated enterprises owned by government units that are engaged in market production and that are operated in a similar way to publicly owned corporations;
  • (b) unincorporated enterprises, including unincorporated partnerships or trusts, owned by households that are operated as if they were privately owned corporations; 
  • (c) unincorporated enterprises that belong to institutional units resident abroad, referred to as “branches”.

78. For the purposes of labour statistics and the classification of the status in employment of the person in a particular job, however, the availability of a complete set of accounts is not a key defining criterion. Owner-operators of household market enterprises should be treated consistently regardless of the availability of a complete set of accounts. They are not separate legal entities from the enterprises in which they work and are exposed to similar economic risks as those who operate enterprises without providing a complete set of accounts. Accordingly, quasi-corporations owned by households (type b above) are not considered as corporations in the standards for statistics on work relationships

Household

79. The concept of household used in these standards is aligned with the definition used for the purposes of the 2008 SNA. A household is defined as a group of persons who share the same living accommodation, who pool some, or all, of their income and wealth and who consume certain types of goods and services collectively, mainly housing and food.2

80. Domestic staff who live on the same premises as their employer do not form part of their employer’s household even though they may be provided with accommodation and meals as remuneration in kind. Paid domestic employees have no claim upon the collective resources of their employers’ households and the accommodation and food they consume are not included with their employer’s consumption. They should therefore be treated as belonging to separate households from their employers.3

Household market enterprises

81. Household market enterprises are unincorporated enterprises owned by households that mainly produce goods or services for sale or barter on the market. They can be engaged in virtually any kind of productive activity: agriculture; mining; manufacturing; construction; retail distribution; or the production of other kinds of services. They can range from single persons working as street traders or shoe cleaners with virtually no capital or premises of their own through to large manufacturing, construction or service enterprises with many employees.4

Entrepreneurs

82. Entrepreneurs are persons who own and control an enterprise and seek to generate value through the creation of economic activity by identifying and exploiting new products, processes or markets. In doing so, they create employment for themselves and potentially for others. This definition is aligned with that included in the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (draft) guidelines on the use of statistical business registers for business demography and entrepreneurship statistics.

83. Those who work on a volunteer basis in non-profit institutions which they control and operate, as well as some workers in own-use production, may also be considered in some contexts as entrepreneurs, because they may create both unpaid work and paid employment for others. Since the main statistical interest in identifying entrepreneurs relates to those who create employment for themselves and for others, this is the concept proposed for the statistical measurement of entrepreneurs. 

84. The category of “independent workers” in the classification of status in employment provides the best starting point for the identification and compilation of statistics on entrepreneurs, as it includes own-account workers and employers in both incorporated and unincorporated enterprises This approach appropriately excludes employees, dependent contractors and contributing family workers from the measurement of entrepreneurs.

85. The draft resolution notes that additional information relevant to the national context is needed to provide complete statistics on entrepreneurship. In some contexts, there is interest in “entrepreneurship” in the sense of starting a new business. The time when the job started is useful as a supplementary variable in this respect. Statistics on the number of employees are also relevant to the compilation of statistics on entrepreneurs.

  1. ^ ISIC Rev.4, Part 1, paras 74 and 75.
  2. ^ SNA, 2008, para. 4.149.
  3. ^ SNA, 2008, para. 4.151.
  4. ^ SNA, 2008, para. 4.155.