Glossary
Short explanations of the ideas behind the numbers on this site, with links to the measures that use them.
Percent or percentage points?
Why a rise from 5% to 6% is one percentage point but a 20% increase.
Purchasing power parity (PPP)
How economists adjust for the fact that the same money buys more in some countries than others.
What the "European Union" figure means
The EU value is an official aggregate for the 27 member states, not an average of country figures.
Provisional, estimated and projected values
What the small letters next to some numbers mean.
Breaks in a time series
Why a sudden jump in a chart is sometimes a change in method, not in reality.
Gross domestic product (GDP)
The value of everything an economy produces in a year, and the different ways it is shown.
Inflation: HICP and CPI
How rising prices are measured, and why two inflation figures for the same country can differ.
How unemployment is measured
Who counts as unemployed, and why the rate is a share of the labour force.
Relative poverty and the at-risk-of-poverty rate
Why a European poverty line moves with each country's income.
The Gini coefficient
A single number for how evenly income is shared.
Life expectancy
An average based on this year's death rates, not a forecast.
Seasonally adjusted data
Removing regular patterns, such as summer jobs, to see the underlying trend.
Modelled estimates
When a figure is calculated by a model rather than measured directly.
Per capita, per 1,000 and per 100,000
Why many figures are divided by population before countries are compared.
NUTS regions
The EU's common classification of regions, used to compare places inside countries.
Population projections and the medium variant
What the UN's figures up to 2100 are, and why they are not predictions.
Flags beside values
What the letters after some numbers mean, and how they affect comparisons.