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Stock and Flow Concepts and Definitions
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Concepts and Definitions

Labour market indicators can broadly be divided into two types, namely, stock variables and flow variables.

Stock variables are variables measured at a point in time.  For example: 
imas  ​ ​ The number of employed persons in December 2013
imas ​ ​ The number of job vacancies in September 2013 


Flow variables are variables measured over an interval of time. For example:

imas  ​ ​ The employment change in the first quarter of 2014
imas  ​ ​ The number of workers made redundant in the second quarter of 2013 
 

 Let’s look at an example.



In this example, the following are stock variables.


On the other hand, the flow variables in this example are: