Structure of Earnings Survey
Introductory note | Contents |
Introduction
(not edited for language)
The Czech Statistical Office (CZSO) in cooperation with the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs periodically presents results of the structural statistics on earnings of employees that are based on sample surveys.
The structural earnings surveys differ from other earnings surveys in several aspects. Mainly, the earnings of individual employees are gathered, not only the overall sums on the level of enterprise or organization. The items of the gross earnings are collected together with personal information of employee such as age, sex, education level etc., and information on time worked/paid. The resulting statistics are very detailed and are used for in-depth analyses of the labour market.
As the volume of information gathered is very exhaustive and the survey is labour consuming, it is neither possible to carry it on all enterprises and organizations in the CR, nor to do it by means of paper questionnaires as usual. The survey has been carried only on the sample of units that are chosen randomly from the Business Register, when the probability of the choice depends on the size of the unit: all units with 1000 employees or more are taken, but units keeping less than 10 employees are not sampled. An electronic way of collecting is used - tailor-made acquisition software reads data straight from the computer systems of the reporting units.
First such a sample survey took place for the reference year 1996 (it was conducted by the Czech Statistical Office). Information on differentiation and distribution of earnings in the CR had come to experts and to public after many years. The survey was repeated for the year 1997. But it was a great burden for the respondents and, moreover, there was duplication in some indicators with already existing Average Earnings Survey (ISPV), which had been taking place as a continual quarterly survey on hourly earnings on behalf of the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs. To decrease the burden of respondent, CZSO gave up conducting survey on its own and, since 1998, it uses the results of ISPV that was enhanced to affect all the important variables that were monitored by CZSO in preceding years.
From year 2002, significant changes have happened in the Average Earnings Survey (ISPV) methodology, and consequently in the data publication. The list of variables has been enlarged and the methodology of the gross earnings calculation has been improved to ensure better comparison on wage levels between individual jobs. The gross earnings now cover all wages and salaries (incl. premia and bonuses) and payments for days not worked (holidays, leave, etc.) and payments for being on call to work during the whole year. The average monthly earning of single employee in the reference year is calculated as the yearly earnings divided by the volume of time paid expressed as a number of months. Time paid is a time when the employee was paid by the employer; it means that all absences (incl. illness) are removed. Such average gross monthly earnings (in CZK) are the best indicator for comparison of earnings levels among different jobs.
But, such earnings are not (and cannot be) the same as average earnings gathered by CZSO’s regular enterprise reporting where overall earnings sum is divided by overall number of employees in the enterprise, because the number of employees covers also employees temporarily not paid (i.e. sick or out of work). Another differences in earnings levels between structural survey results and any other sources may stem (apart of influence of absences and different sample scheme) from non-coverage of employees with normal weekly hours less than 30 as regards ISPV.
Besides, we should take into consideration that results from any sample survey are always imprecise because of sample error; moreover, that some sampled units did not send information required (i.e. non-response) or that some records could not be used for one reason or another. Consequently, some small distortions might happen from this source.
This publication consists of three parts:
· Part A incorporates aggregated results for the Czech Republic as whole. They are grossed up by weights based on industries and size classes. This part includes only simple breakdowns with small number of categories
· Part B incorporates aggregated results for regions. They are grossed up by weights based only on size classes. As well as the part A, this part includes simple breakdowns with small number of categories
· Part C incorporates results with small level of aggregation. They are not grossed up at all; it means that the results speak only about the sample. These results are detailed and the cross-breakdowns are included.
The objective of this publication is to describe a structure of earnings from various points of view and to find out main differences in earnings levels among individual categories of employees, emphasis is put on the earnings distribution. Not only arithmetic mean is used, but also median, that shows the earnings of an employee in the middle of the earnings group – and in this way – speaks better about the real earnings level in the category. Great accent is put on the breakdown by sex. On the other hand, the goal of the sample survey is not to search for overall average earnings in the whole national economy, CZSO’s regular reporting is better source for this purpose.
The most important breakdown in the structural survey is occupation. The Czech version of international standard classification (ISCO-88 COM) has been used. The results in the publication, part C, are broken down by unit group (4-digit level).
Prague, September 2004
Ivo M a k a l o u š
Head of Employment and Wages Statistics Department
Note: Where only individual data available, asterisk can be found in the tables. The results that are in brackets are supposed to be less relevant (a dominance of one enterprise or organization).