Indicator A4 provides a breakdown of indicator A3a by migrant background, focusing on the particular impact of migrant background on labour market inactivity among women. Employment is perceived by many Member States as a key factor for social inclusion and offers the most important means of escaping the poverty cycle.
Inactivity is defined as the percentage of persons who are neither employed nor unemployed in the labour market. Employed persons are all persons who worked at least one hour for pay or profit during the reference week or were temporarily absent from such work. Unemployed persons are all persons who were not employed during the reference week and had actively sought work during the past four weeks and were ready to begin working immediately within two weeks. Inactivity does not, however, mean that persons who are in this category are inactive in general. They can, for example, be taking care of children or incapacitated adults, doing domestic work or studying.
Migrant background is defined through country of birth into broad groups: native-born and foreign-born, with the latter further divided into two groups (non-EU born: born outside of the EU-28 or EU born: born in another EU country). Country of birth is defined as the country of residence of the person's mother at the time of their birth. The separation of data for foreign-born nationals born outside the EU-28 and those born in another EU-28 Member State is not available for all Member States.
For analysis of the situation, the data for people aged 16-64 was used in the database. A few broad age subgroups were used to illustrate differences in inactivity by age.
Available flags:
| b | break in time series | c | confidential |
| d | definition differs, see metadata | e | estimated |
| f | forecast | i | see metadata |
| m | imputed | n | not significant |
| p | provisional | r | revised |
| s | Eurostat estimate | u | low reliability |
| x | dropped due to insufficient sample size | y | unreliable due to small sample size |
| z | not applicable |