Economics

ILOSTAT

OVERVIEW

ILOSTAT of the International Labour Organization (ILO) is a data tool for exploring labor related topics. ILOSTAT provides labor statistics in 400 indicators, covering over 200 countries and 80 regions and dating back to the 1940s. The time series are available annually, quarterly, and/or monthly, depending on the indicator. *

*This description is based on the information on ILOSTAT website.

Available data file formats

CSV, PDF, DTA, SAV, JSON, and RDS

Accessibility

This is an open data source that is for public use.

ILOSTAT

HOW TO RETRIEVE DATA BY EXAMPLE

Scenario

Suppose you want to see how average hourly earnings of the general Brazilians labor force change over time from 2001 to 2010. You would like to download the data in CSV form.

Step-by-step

Locate the data source. Go to ILOSTAT. The page would appear as follows.

Screenshot of the ILOSTAT main page. On the left, there is a big search box.

Find the right indicator. On the left of the screen, there is a search bar. Type in average hourly earnings and five results would show up. The first one matches the subject you are looking for. Click on Annual (meaning only annual data are available for this indicator) to get to the indicator page.

Screenshot similar to the image above except now “average hourly earnings” is typed in the search box and the results are displayed under it accordingly.

Select the country of interest, Brazil. The next step is to find the right country for the indicator. Under Country, first deselect all countries on the drop-down list by clicking on None and then select Brazil. Following a similar procedure for Sex and Occupation and select Total and Occupation (ISCO-08): Total respectively.

Screenshot of the Dataset page for the selected indicator. There are four filters, Country, Sex, Occupation, and Time period, from left to right.

Select the right time interval. Next to Occupation, you can select from Time period. Move the left circle to the right until you see 2001 and the right circle to the left when 2010 shows up. Now the data of the right indicator for Brazil from 2001 to 2010 would be automatically generated as in the table below. Note that the data for 2010 is missing and the numbers are in local currency (Brazil Real).

Screenshot similar to the image above except the following values are selected for the responding filters, from left to right, Brazil, Total, Occupation (ISCO-08), and 2001 to 2010. Furthermore, there is a data table generated below the filters.

Download your data. Click on Download to customize your data form from the pop-up menu. Choose the selection with label in CSV. Then click on download button below to finalize your download. By the way, you can also export the data in PDF form by clicking on PDF on the left the Download button.

Screenshot of the download section. Of the four buttons below the filters, the fourth one is for downloading data. Clicking on it would provide you three further options, in which the third one is the file forms of dataset.

Be sure to consult with the source website on how to properly cite your data. For this scenario, the citation in APA format would look something like:

International Labour Organization. ILOSTAT. https://ilostat.ilo.org/data/ (Accessed on December 9, 2019)