Measuring Vacancies: Firm-level Evidence from Two Measures

TL;DR

This paper investigates the measurement discrepancies between survey-based and register-based vacancy data in Sweden and Denmark, revealing systematic mis-measurement and proposing an adjustment factor to better estimate true vacancies.

Contribution

It provides the first systematic comparison of vacancy measures across two countries and quantifies the adjustment needed for more accurate vacancy measurement.

Findings

Survey vacancies are about 20% higher than register vacancies.

The discrepancy varies over time and across firm characteristics.

Adjusting survey vacancies by a factor of 1.2 improves measurement accuracy.

Abstract

Using firm-level survey- and register-data for both Sweden and Denmark we show systematic mis-measurement in both vacancy measures. While the register-based measure on the aggregate constitutes a quarter of the survey-based measure, the latter is not a super-set of the former. To obtain the full set of unique vacancies in these two databases, the number of survey vacancies should be multiplied by approximately 1.2. Importantly, this adjustment factor varies over time and across firm characteristics. Our findings have implications for both the search-matching literature and policy analysis based on vacancy measures: Observed changes in vacancies can be an outcome of changes in mis-measurement, and are not necessarily changes in the actual number of vacancies.