Structure of Earnings Survey 2005

Introductory note

Contents

(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. 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.
In the years 1998 - 2003 Average Earnings Survey (ISPV) had been used as the only source of information. From year 2004, the ISPV provides data for the business sphere only; the non-business sphere is not covered any more and a new administrative source is used to provide data for it - the Information System on Salary (ISP), kept by the Ministry of Finance. It covers exhaustively all employees in all organizations paid according to the Act No. 143/1992 Coll. The both databases of ISPV and ISP have been merged together and serve for the calculation of the results for the total economy. It should be taken into account that the ISPV does not cover enterprises with less than ten employees.
As the volume of information gathered by the ISPV is very exhaustive and the survey is labour consuming, especially for the lesser enterprises, 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. An electronic way of collecting is used - tailor-made acquisition software reads data straight from the computer systems of the reporting units.

The gross earnings 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, results from any sample survey are always imprecise because of sample error; moreover, some sampled units do not send information required (i.e. non-response) or some records could not be used for one reason or another. Consequently, some small distortions might happen from this source. We should also take into consideration that the results quality is equal to the quality of the source, i.e. enterprises’ databases; it is important specifically as to the classifications used (ISCO, ISCED, etc.).

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 that were practically not grossed up; it means that they speak only about the sample of units and employees; only some methods were applied in order to reduce the effect of the non-proportional representation of the non-business sphere resulting from the fact that the ISP is a full-coverage administrative source while the ISPV is a sample survey. These results are with small level of aggregation, they 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 are broken down by major groups, groups and also by unit group (4-digit level) in the table C1.

Prague, May 2005
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). Empty cell means that the phenomenon did not occur; the zero value shows that the figure is smaller than a half of unit of measure chosen.