Monthly

Data collection is by post and via the internet over a period that extends from the end of the month preceding the survey month to the survey publication date, i.e. 4 business days before the end of the current month.

Survey results are sent to the European Commission 4 business days before the end of the month.

The collection period runs from the end of the month preceding the reference month of the survey to the date of publication of the results (between the 20th and 25th of the reference month).

Survey of a sample of 4,000 industrial enterprises with 20 employees or more.

All enterprises with at least 500 employees of turnover of €150 million are surveyed.

4,000 units

The survey is conducted every month but not all questions are asked every month.

In practice, several models of questionnaires were created to take into account these specificities :
- the first questionnaire corresponds to the months of January, April, July and October.  In 2020, the questionnaire of the January, has been punctually modified to collect information on BREXIT's effect;
- the second one is sent in other months.

The published series are seasonally adjusted (CVS). Seasonality tests are carried out on all series. A series that initially has no seasonal character is presented as a CVS series with zero coefficients and is equal to the gross series. The effects are estimated using the X-13 ARIMA method under JDemetra+ (provided by Eurostat). The aggregation levels for which seasonality has been studied are those of the publication levels. CVS indices for senior positions are obtained by aggregating the CVS indices that compose them.