The indicators in the Handbook are statistical and those required to describe and assess phenomena relevant to labour covering the population of persons, establishments and jobs or substantial subsets of them such as women, establishments in critical sectors and jobs in the formal sector. Other topic- or institution-specific indicators used for programme monitoring and evaluation or management of resources are not included, for example number of business development advisers with international certification.

The International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) was designed by UNESCO in the early 1970’s to serve ‘as an instrument suitable for assembling, compiling and presenting statistics of education both within individual countries and internationally’.

In summary, the current methodology depends on establishing a “benchmark” every five years. Between these benchmarks, indicators based largely on administrative records are used to extrapolate the benchmark. At constant prices, the quarterly estimates of activity are essentially the equivalent of Indices of Production covering all types of activity in the economy. Except for price data, these quarterly estimates do not rely much on statistical surveys, which are however a key input for the benchmarks.