relevant labor market indicators<sup>5</sup> , we decided to focus on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) labor market indicators. We do so for four reasons: the SDGs emphasize the importance of productive employment and decent work (e.g. goal 8); monitoring the SDGs is one of the objectives of some of the survey programs we reviewed; the SDG labor market indicators offer the potential to study many topics that go beyond the SDGs; and the SDGs emphasize the need to disaggregate indicators by sex and age.

SDG labor market indicators are composed of a set of concepts that determine the indicators. Table A in the Appendix presents the SDG labor market indicators, while Table B in the Appendix identifies and defines the concepts underlying these indicators. An in‐depth review of the SDG labor market indicators goes beyond the scope of this paper.<sup>6</sup> In this section we only briefly highlight key concepts that have recently been revised.

A major innovation of the 19<sup>th</sup> International Conference of Labour Statisticians (ICLS) in 2013 was the introduction of a definition of work (Benes & Walsh, 2018b). Work is now defined as ‘any activity performed by persons of any sex and age to produce goods or to provide services for use by others or for own use’ (19th ICLS, §6). It consists of five mutually exclusive forms of work: (1) own‐use production work, (2) employment work, (3) unpaid trainee work, (4) volunteer work and (5) other unpaid work activities (not defined in the resolution). While these five forms of work are mutually exclusive, persons can be engaged in several forms of work in a short reference period. The 20<sup>th</sup> ICLS in 2018 revised the International Classification of Status in Employment (ICSE‐18) aligning this classification with the narrowed definition of employment. Workers are classified in 10 categories. These 10 categories can be aggregated according to the authority the worker can exercise ( _independent workers_ vis‐à‐vis _dependent workers)_ and the type of economic risk the worker is exposed to _(workers employed for profit_ vis‐à‐vis _workers employed for pay)._ The new International Classification of Status at Work (ICSaW) extends ICSE‐18 by including all types of work activities such as own‐use production, volunteer work or unpaid traineeships and, thus, aligns with the new definition of work (ILO, 2018a).

The establishment of a definition of work has implications for the trichotomy of _employment, unemployment_ and _persons out of the labor force_ (also called inactivity), concepts that were ‐ and still are ‐ at the heart of labor market statistics. While greatly expanding the scope of labor market statistics by defining work, the 19<sup>th</sup> ICLS narrowed at the same time the definition of employment to _work for pay or profit_ (19th ICLS, §27). In contrast to the previous definition, individuals engaging exclusively in producing goods for own final use, such as subsistence farmers, are no longer classified as ‘employed’.<sup>7</sup>

> 5 ILO’s decent work indicators are another set of relevant labor market indicators (ILO, 2013a). The 71 decent work indicators, including 21 legal framework indicators, cover the four pillars of decent work (full and productive employment; rights at work; social protection; promotion of social rights). We do not review these indicators here.

> 6 See ILO’s recent guidebook for a detailed overview (ILO, 2018c).

> 7 In practice, the definition of employment used by national statistical offices already varied before the 2013 revision of the definition of employment. An ILO paper, reviewing all LFS conducted between 2000 and 2010, shows that all countries include wage employment and self‐employment in market units within the concept of employment. Variation exists, however, with

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