Construction of full-time equivalents for the Swiss structural business statistics 2011

From 2011 onwards, the Swiss business census is replaced by the new Swiss structural business statistics (STATENT). STATENT is mainly based on register data and complemented by several business surveys. Full-time equivalents (FTE) of employment are not available in the register data and should be constructed. This report presents the methodology used for the construction of FTE for STATENT. Two important topics are treated. First, we describe the model used for estimating FTE based on survey data which are matched to register data. The different phases in the development of the model such as model selection, robustification and quality assessment are presented. Then, we discuss how data inconsistency due to the integration of different sources is treated. The method that we apply to treat the inconsistencies takes into account the fact that they may be related to the type of employment. Finally, we explain how this data harmonization affects the estimation of the model and the construction of FTE for STATENT.