Consistency of growth rates between year N and year N-1 is checked (additional variables with a comparable concept are made available if there is a change in concept between two years).

When analysing time series, some breaks must be kept in mind:

For Acoss data:
- Appearance of the status of auto-entrepreneur (self-employed entrepreneur) in 2009;
Inclusion of a part of dividends in the contribution basis of the majority managers from 2013 onwards;
- Improvement of the method for calculating the income of self-employed entrepreneurs from 2014 onwards;
- Modification of input data allowing to establish the links between managers and the companies they manage from 2015 onwards (leading to breaks in the type of self-employed – independant workers in household market enterprises or owner-operators of corporations (SA & SAS excluded) -, in the number of managers with no link to a company, and in the allocation of self-employed by sector of activity);
- Improvement in the identification of the main status of pluriactive people in 2015.

For MSA data:
- Progressive integration (over two years) of a part of dividends into the contribution basis from 2013 onwards;
- Provision of the number of self-employed in the French overseas departments from 2013 onwards;
- Provision of the number of self-employed for business ceasing during the year, from 2014 onwards;
- Improvement in the identification of the sector of activity from 2015 onwards.