EMPLOYMENT IN THE MARKET ECONOMY IN ... - Eurostat - Europa

Chapter 4 — Employment and wages in industry by region
The SBS regional data
The SBS regional data cover a limited number of variables
(at present, the number employed, local units, wages and
salaries and gross investment), disaggregated at a NACE
2-digit level, for NUTS 2-level regions across the EU. Unlike
the data analysed in previous chapters, these variables are
classified to NACE sectors of activity according to the main
activity of local units (ie enterprises or parts of enterprises
— eg workshops, factories, warehouses, offices and so on
— situated in a geographically identified place). This
should give a more accurate representation of the actual
regional distribution of employment and the other variables
than if the basis of classification of activities were the enterprise
as in previous chapters.
The regional basis of classification of these data is the standard
NUTS — ie the nomenclature of territorial units for statistics
— system used by Eurostat. This, so far as possible,
divides countries into administrative areas which are similar
in terms of population. In practice, there are large differences
in both the population size of regions and their land
area. Overall, there are some 206 NUTS 2-level regions in
the EU15 and a further 41 in the 10 new Member States.
Bulgaria and Romania are divided into 6 regions and 8 respectively.
The data used in the analysis relate mainly to 2001 but to
2000 where data for the later year are not yet available. This
applies to Belgium, Denmark, Greece, France, Ireland, Finland
and the UK. This does not affect the results presented
here significantly. In some countries where regional data
are not available, specifically Denmark and Slovenia, national
data have been used instead. (For Slovenia, data are
for employees rather than the total employed.) As a result,
data are enterprise-based, as in previous chapters, rather
than based on the main activity of local units as for other
countries. In Portugal and Finland, where the NUTS classification
have recently changed and where because of this
no SBS data are as yet available for the regions affected,
the data shown for employment are based on LFS regional
data which have been aligned with the SBS national figures.
This is also the case for the Czech Republic, where
there are no SBS regional data.
In addition, there are a number of regions where data are
missing for the industries selected for analysis here, mainly
for confidentiality reasons, and where estimates based on
available data are presented instead in order to have a
complete a map as possible. Estimates in these cases are
derived from NUTS 1 level data for the industry in question
or from the data for 2000 or 1999. These estimates ought
not to be a major source of error given the relatively wide
sectors into which the data are divided.
No such estimates have been made for average wages
since there is no readily available alternative data source to
use.
Germany, Luxembourg, Champagne-Ardenne in France,
Norra Mellansverige in Sweden, Pohjois-Suomi in Finland,
Asturias and Pais Vasco in Spain, Sterea Ellada in Greece
and West Midlands in the UK.
Machinery and equipment
There are some three times the numbers employed in machinery
and equipment (NACE sector 29), ie mechanical
engineering, in the enlarged EU than in basic metals. Employment
is also more dispersed across the EU. It is particularly
high in most parts of the Czech Republic (over
2% of working-age population) as well as in Severen
Tsentralen and Yuzhen Tsentralen in Bulgaria and Centru
in Romania (where it also accounts for over 2% of working-age
population). It is even higher in
Baden-Württemberg, Unterfranken and Schwaben in
Germany (4% or more of working-age population). Employment
in the sector is equally important in
Emilia-Romagna in Italy and only slightly less so in
Piemonte, Veneto, Lombardia and Marche. Elsewhere,
there are relatively large numbers employed (over 2% of
working-age population) in Småland med Öarna (almost
4% of working-age population) and Norra Mellansverige
in Sweden, Etelä-Suomi in Finland, Pais Vasco in Spain
and the West Midlands in the UK.
Electrical machinery and equipment
Electrical machinery and equipment (NACE sector 31), ie
electrical engineering, has a similar regional distribution
across the enlarged EU as machinery and equipment. However
it employed around half the number of people in the Union
as mechanical engineering in 2001. Again, employment is
high in many Czech regions (close to 3% of working-age
population in Jihozápad and Severovýchod, in the
south-west and north, respectively), in Közép-Dunántúl and
Nyugat-Dunántúl in the west of Hungary (2% of working-age
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