Définition
A structural indicator is a statistic used to describe a medium or long-term economic or socio-demographic situation constructed with the objective of identifying the effects of structural transformations. Structural indicators are often used to monitor the implementation of long-term economic policies, for example in the form of objectives to be achieved. The most commonly used structural indicators are socio-demographic variables (share of different age groups, share of graduates, etc.), labor productivity, employment rate, labor or capital costs. ... Indicators built to measure sustainable development are by nature considered structural indicators.
An indicator will be considered structural or cyclical depending on the use made of it. Some indicators can be both cyclical and structural. For example, the unemployment rate was seen primarily as a cyclical indicator, but since it has remained in France at a high level since the 1980s, it is now also seen as a structural indicator. However, the way to estimate it will be different: the cyclical version of this indicator will correspond to the rate of unemployment observed precisely at a given date, whereas its structural version will be estimated on average over a sufficiently long period of time.