On the reliability of the IAB reports regarding the overall stock of job vacancies

Abstract

"The figures published annually by the IAB concerning the stock of job vacancies across the economy could potentially provide information about the extent of mismatch unemployment that could be of value in terms of labour market diagnosis. This paper explains that the IAB figures on this do not, however, provide quite the information that they seem to promise at first sight. For theoretical considerations and empirical evidence indicate that the job vacancy stocks ascertained by the IAB are a mixture of real vacancies and jobs to be filled at a later date. On the other hand, the figure of 'jobs to be filled later', which is shown separately by the IAB, presumably only captures some of the total number of jobs to be filled later, namely those for which the date of the planned recruitment is still a long time off at the time when the survey is conducted. In addition, the vacancy stocks reported by the IAB disregard entirely the stock of vacancies which are unfilled only due to a delayed commencement of matched candidates. Finally some modifications to the programme of questions and the reporting scheme used in the annual IAB surveys are put forward, which would make it possible to improve the labour-market-diagnostic information content of the relevant IAB reports." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

Cite article

Scherl, H. (2005): Zum Aussagewert der IAB-Berichte über gesamtwirtschaftliche Vakanzbestände. In: Zeitschrift für ArbeitsmarktForschung, Vol. 38, No. 1, p. 89-101.