2018 International Product Release Notes

Industry List Expanded

The 2018 International Product includes data for 46 industries – an addition of 9 industries relative to the 2015 International Product. The changes are as follows: 

• Fishing and aquaculture has been split out as a distinct industry from the former Agriculture, forestry, and fishing industry 
• Pharmaceuticals, medicinal chemical and botanical products have been split out as a distinct industry from the former Chemicals and pharmaceutical products industry.
• Water supply; sewerage, waste management and remediation activities has been split out as a distinct industry from the former Electricity, gas, water supply, sewerage, waste, and remediation services industry.
• The former Transportation and storage industry has been split into five distinct industries: 
  • Land transport and transport via pipelines 
  • Water transport 
  • Air transport
  • Warehousing and support activities for transportation 
  • Postal and courier activities 
• The former Other business sector services industry has been split into two distinct industries:  
  • Professional, scientific, and technical activities 
  • Administrative and support services 
• Other service activities has been split out as a separate industry from the former Arts, entertainment, recreation, and other service activities industry 

Country List Expanded 

The 2018 International Product includes data for the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Laos) and Myanmar.  

No Longer Using WIOD-SEA Employment Data 

In the production of IMPLAN’s 2015 International Product, the first choice  for employment data, when available for a given country, was the one-year lagged (2014) World Input-Output Database (WIOD) Socio-Economic Accounts (WIOD-SEA) data on employment by industry projected using employment growth rates from the International Labour Organization’s Modeled and Projected Estimates (ILO-EST) employment dataset. 

The WIOD projects, which were funded by European Union grants, have concluded and have no long-term funding in place and no plans for updates.  Due to the now-longer lag between the WIOD-SEA employment data and the I-O data, this option for employment will no longer be utilized in the production of IMPLAN’s International Solution.

Improved Methodology for Splitting ILO-EST Employment 

The ILO-EST employment data does not have as much sector detail as the OECD I-O data¹, thereby requiring the use of ratios calculated from other data sources that do have the necessary sector detail to split the ILO-EST data into the necessary sector detail. The data used to calculate such split ratios is either the ILO-LFS employment data², the OECD Employee Compensation (EC) data, or some combination of the two. While the ILO-LFS data are preferred over the OECD EC data for this purpose³, the ILO-LFS data are not always available for all sectors for a given country, thus necessitating the use of the OECD EC data in some cases.  

When producing the 2015 International Data, the OECD EC data method was used for all of the detailed sectors that mapped to a given ILO-EST sector if any of those more-detailed sectors was missing ILO-LFS data, with the result that each of those more-detailed sectors had the same EC per employee rates. We have since implemented an improvement whereby the OECD EC split method is used for only those detailed sectors for which there are no ILO-LFS data, after which the leftover amount that needs to be distributed to the other detailed sectors that map to the same ILO-EST parent I-O sector is distributed to those detailed sectors based on those sectors’ ILO-LFS data, thereby allowing for varying EC per employee rates among the detailed sectors in those cases where there exists ILO-LFS data for at least some of the detailed sectors that map to a given OECD I-O sector.  

¹ The Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation’s (OECD) input-output (I-O) data form the basis for IMPLAN’s International Solution data sets. 

² The ILO’s labour force survey (LFS) data have more sector detail than their EST data.  We only use the LFS data for splitting the EST data into more detail, rather than using their values outright because a) the LFS data are not available for all sectors for all countries (i.e., they do not represent a complete data set) and b) their values have not been adjusted for differences in survey administration among all the countries, as have the EST data. 

³ Using the OECD EC data to calculate split ratios for all sectors that map to a given ILO-EST sector would result in EC per Employment rates that are the same for all of those sectors.

Written August 30, 2023