Labor force 1987-2025

The time series of the labor force published from 1987 onwards contain several breaks due to changes in design, processing and definitions. The last revision, in 2021, has been backcasted to 2013. This report describes how these series have been further backcasted to 1987, the first year in which the Labour Force Survey (EBB) was conducted. The aim is to estimate consistent annual series of the labor-market participation (3 categories) × age (five-year classes) × gender for the period 1987-2025 and further subdivided by education level (4 categories) for the period 2003-2025. The breaks in the series by age and sex in the period 1987-2002 were initially corrected for differences in definitions and weighting. Remaining breaks have been statistically corrected by using overlapping years, maintaining as much as possible the year-on-year changes in the period 1987-2002. For the employed labor force, working hours were used as an auxiliary variable. The calculations for 2003-2012 have been carried out at a much more detailed level; this allows to derive time me series by education level in line with the published series for 2013-2025.

Kees Zeelenberg (2026). Labor force 1987-2025. Discussion paper, CBS, The Hague/Heerlen.