3 Data
The PWE register of business establishments
The data used in this paper were obtained from the PWE (provincial employment
inquiry) register of business establishments in the province of Gelderland (the
Netherlands), which was provided by the province of Gelderland. The PWE is a
regional subdivision of LISA (National Information System Labour Markets). LISA
was originally set up as an administrative register for the implementation of social
security laws. Currently it is a main source for socio-economic and spatial-economic
analysis in the Netherlands. The PWE register holds information on all business
establishments in Gelderland, where paid work is being performed. Besides firm
establishments the PWE register also holds information on governmental
establishments, educational establishments, public health services and establishments
for free professions.
The basic unit in the PWE register is an establishment, which is defined as “a location
of a firm, institute, or free profession (i.e. any factory, workplace, shop or other working
accomodation, or a complex of these) in which or from where an aconomic activity or
independent profession is performed by one or more employed persons (at least one
person for 12 hours per week)”.
Numbers of firms
For our research we were provided with PWE-data from 1986 up to 2002. Table 1
shows the number of establishments and number of employed per year.
Table 1: Number of establishments and number of employed in the province of
Gelderland, 1986-2002___________________________________________________
|
Year |
Number of establishments |
Number of employed (including |
|
1986 |
70,756 |
594,454 |
|
1987 |
71,887 |
608,595 |
|
1988 |
73,437 |
622,755 |
|
1989 |
73,242 |
637,286 |
|
1990 |
75,791 |
664,845 |
|
1991 |
76,609 |
696,554 |
|
1992 |
79,755 |
713,957 |
|
1993 |
81,749 |
722,556 |
|
1994 |
86,766 |
732,106 |
|
1995 |
90,375 |
751,207 |
|
1996 |
93,527 |
772,599 |
|
1997 |
96,113 |
795,361 |
|
1998 |
99,631 |
829,524 |
|
1999 |
102,855 |
856,658 |
|
2000 |
104,051 |
874,665 |
|
2001 |
105,693 |
892,064 |
|
____________2002________ |
_________________106,334___________ |
_____________892,400____________ |
During the period 1986-2002 both the number of firms and the number of employed in
Gelderland grew with fifty percent, or 2.6 percent per year. On average each
establishment employed 8.5 persons (including parttime and agency staff).
The PWE files contain a lot of information per establishment. In this paper we used the
following variables:
- SBI’93 code (5-digit);