The definition of a job and the flow approach to the labour market; a sensitivity analysis for the Netherlands

Measurement of labour market flows depends on three major aspects of the job definition, namely (i) the size of the job; (ii) the length of the job, and (iii) whether in accordance to national accounting rules, jobs are identified with labour contracts, or whether in accordance to labour demand theory, unfilled vacancies are also counted as jobs. This paper looks at the sensitivity of measuring job and worker flows with respect to these alternatives for the job definition. Measurement of labour market dynamics appears especially sensitive for the dynamic dimension of the job definition, namely that of (minimum) job length.