Domestic payroll employment: + 0.2% in the third quarter of 2024 and + 1.0% over 12 months

As in previous quarters, quarterly growth in domestic payroll employment was only 0.2% compared to the second quarter of 2024. In terms of annual variation, the increase was 1% (+0.9% in the second quarter of 2024, compared with 1.8% in the third quarter of 2023). Specialised and support service activities (+0.7%) and administration and other public services (+0.9%) show the strongest quarterly increases compared to the second quarter of 2024. On the other hand, industry, construction and information and communication recorded a fall in the number of employees in the third quarter of 2024.

Specialised and support activities (+2.0% year-on-year) and administration and other public services (+4.0% year-on-year) are the most dynamic sectors in year-on-year comparison. For the former activities, the favourable development stems from routine building cleaning services. As for public administration and other public services, central government services recorded the most favourable growth. In terms of annual variation, the construction sector saw a sharp fall of 5.2% in the number of employees. The biggest job losses were in residential and non-residential building construction.

In the third quarter of 2024, the number of resident employees rose more strongly than the number of cross-border commuters (+0.3% for residents compared with +0.1 for cross-border commuters compared with the second quarter of 2024). The number of German cross-border commuters employed fell by 0.4% compared with the third quarter of 2023. Looking at quarterly variations, the number of cross-border commuters from Belgium has also fallen slightly (-0.1% compared with the second quarter of 2024).

Evolution of domestic payroll employment (compared to the previous quarter)

Source: STATEC, National Accounts, seasonally adjusted data

Evolution of domestic payroll employment

Methodological note :

Employment estimates are based on the national accounts concept and are drawn up in accordance with the European System of National and Regional Accounts 2010 (ESA 2010), which defines employment in accordance with International Labour Organisation (ILO) criteria.

Data on domestic salaried employment include all employees working on national territory, i.e. including cross-border employees living beyond the national border and coming to work in the Grand Duchy, and exclude resident employees working abroad and international civil servants residing in the country. The unit of measurement is the person. Thus, a person working part-time counts as one person, as does a person working two part-time jobs. Nor is there any conversion into full-time equivalents.

Estimates of employment in the national accounts may differ from those of other statistics, such as social security registrations published by the IGSS (which include employees who do not work on national territory and which do not distinguish by kind of economic activity unit), or surveys, in particular the Labour Force Survey (which does not include cross-border commuters).

The data are seasonally adjusted and subject to revision. For business cycle analysis and quarter-on-quarter changes, the data are seasonally adjusted, while year-on-year changes are calculated on the raw data. 

Long series, both unadjusted and seasonally adjusted, are available in the 'Labour market' section of the Statistics Portal.

The data is published once a quarter, 75 days after the end of the reference period (T+75 days).