The OECD Regional Database provides a unique set of comparable statistics and indicators on about 2,000 regions in 30 countries. It encompasses yearly time-series for around 40 indicators of demography, economic accounts, labour market, social and innovation themes in the OECD member countries.

In any analytical study conducted at sub-national levels, the choice of the territorial unit is of prime importance. The territorial grids (TL2 and TL3) used in this database are officially established and relatively stable in all member countries, and are used by many as a framework for implementing regional policies. The 389 OECD large (TL2) regions represent the first administrative tier of subnational government. This classification - which, for European countries, is largely consistent with the Eurostat classification - facilitates greater comparability of regions at the same territorial level. The differences with the Eurostat NUTS classification concern Belgium, Germany and the United Kingdom where the OECD TL2 regions correspond to the Eurostat NUTS1. TL3 and NUTS3 are equivalent.

Due to limited data availability, labour market indicators in Canada and Germany are presented for a different grid (groups of TL3 regions). Since these breakdowns are not part of the OECD official territorial grids, for the sake of simplicity they are labelled as Non Official Grids (NOG).