Labour market areas (LMAs, “local labour systems – SLL” in Italy) are sub-regional geographical areas where the bulk of the labour force lives and works, and where establishments can find the main part of the labour force necessary to occupy the offered jobs. They respond to the need for meaningfully comparable sub-regional labour market areas for the reporting and analysis of statistics. LMAs are defined on a functional basis, the key criterion being the proportion of commuters who cross the LMA boundary on their way to work.
LMAs are developed through an allocation process that creates the LMAs based on the analysis of commuting patterns. 2011 LMAs have been released in 2014 and are based on commuting data stemming from the 15th Population Census using an allocation process shared at European level: they are 611 distinct areas. Thanks to the Eurostat Grant “EU-TTWA method: improvements, documentation and sharing knowledge activities” an open source R package has been developed that performs the complete cycle of the delineation of the LMAs.
During 2018, the creation of the new municipality of Corigliano Rossano from the merging of the municipalities of Corigliano and Rossano Calabro both leader municipalities of the corresponding LMAs, led to the fusion of such LMAs into a new one causing the drop of the number of LMAs from 611 to 610.
Methodology: the algorithm and the R package
- The implemented algorithm
- The R package LabourMarketAreas