Technical Paper on the Measurement of Household Joblessness in SILC and QNHS, 2004-2012: An Analysis of the CSO Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC) and the Quarterly National Household Survey (QNHS)

In most European countries there is a difference between the estimates of household joblessness coming from the European Labour Force Survey and the Survey of Income and Living Conditions, because of the different definitions of joblessness and the use of different data sources. However, the gap is much larger than elsewhere in Ireland, with the Quarterly National Household Survey (QNHS, the source of Labour Force data for Ireland) giving an estimate of 17 per cent in 2012 compared to 23 per cent in SILC. This paper investigated the reasons for the large gap in Ireland, including the role played by the different definitions and characteristics of the sample. The findings indicate that the different definitions play a relatively minor role, but that the structure of the sample is more important, specifically the percentage of adults in employment and the distribution of employment across households of different types.