Article 5Reference periods and reference dates
1
The information collected for the labour force domain shall generally relate to the situation during the course of a single week, running from Monday to Sunday, which constitutes the reference week.
2
The age of a person shall be the age in completed years at the end of the reference week.
3
Reference quarters shall be as follows:
a
quarters of each year refer to the 12 months of the year divided by four so that January, February and March belong to the first quarter, April, May and June to the second quarter, July, August and September to the third quarter and October, November and December to the fourth quarter;
b
the reference weeks are allocated to the reference quarters so that a week belongs to the quarter as defined in point (a) to which at least four days of that week belong (called ‘Thursday rule’), unless this results in the first quarter of the year consisting of only 12 weeks. In that case, the quarters of the year in question will be formed by consecutive blocks of 13 weeks;
c
where, in accordance with point (b), a quarter consists of 14 weeks instead of 13 weeks Member States should attempt to spread the sample over all 14 weeks; that includes the option to divide the sample usually assigned to one week over 2 weeks;
d
if it is not feasible to spread the sample to cover all 14 weeks of the quarter, the Member State concerned may skip one week of that quarter by not covering it;
e
the weeks with a divided sample and the week to be skipped should be typical with regard to unemployment, employment and average actual hours worked and should be part of a month containing five Thursdays;
f
the first quarter of 2021 shall begin on Monday, 4 January 2021.
4
A reference year shall be the combination of the four reference quarters of that year.