Cyprus (2)

Title of the survey

Survey of wages, salaries and hours of work

Organization responsible

Ministry of Finance, Department of Statistics and Research

Periodicity of the survey

Annual, with reference to October.

Objectives of the survey

Main labour topics covered by the survey

Earnings, wage and salary rates, hours of work and compensation of employees.

Reference period

A specific week in October for wage earners, and the month of October for salaried employees.

Coverage of the survey

Geographical

The Government-controlled area of Cyprus.

Industrial

All branches of economic activity, except the armed forces.

Establishments

All types and sizes of establishments.

Persons

Full-time employees aged 15 years or over, excluding Cypriots working abroad and those working on the British bases. Working proprietors and unpaid family workers are excluded.

Occupations

All occupations are covered. The actual occupations for which data are reported depend on the employees covered.

Concepts and definitions

Employment

Data are collected on full-time employees. They comprise hourly, daily or weekly paid employees who were present on the payroll during the reference week, and monthly paid employees who were paid for the whole month. Included are casual, temporary and seasonal workers present on payroll during the reference period, commission agents, apprentices, trainees and workers on probation, as well as persons temporarily absent from work because of paid vacation or holiday, industrial dispute or any other paid absence. Excluded are part-time workers, piece-workers, homeworkers, workers subcontracted from other companies or agencies, young workers below the age of 15, and persons who have not been paid for the whole month because of unpaid vacation or holiday, sickness or accident, etc. Data are collected separately on: by occupation and sex.

Earnings

Data are collected on the gross weekly or monthly earnings paid to employees, before any deductions for employees' income and other taxes, and employees' contributions to social insurance, medical, provident or other funds. Gross earnings include the following components, for which data are collected separately: Data are collected separately for each full-time employee, along with information on occupation and sex.

Wage/salary rates

Data on rates of pay include the basic rates of pay (per hour, week or month) for normal hours of work (excluding overtime), all regular bonuses and allowances and the weekly or monthly portion of bonuses and gratuities paid irregularly during the year (i.e. the elements of the normal rate of pay mentioned under Earnings). Data are collected separately for each full-time employee, along with information on occupation and by sex.

Hours of work

For each hourly, daily or weekly paid employee, data are collected on: expressed in terms of hours and minutes. For each monthly paid employee, data are collected on normal hours of work per week only, expressed in hours and minutes. Normal hours of work are those fixed by collective agreements, laws or establishments' internal regulations. Normal hours actually worked for hourly, daily and weekly paid employees include time spent at the workplace for preparation, maintenance, repairs, etc.; time spent at the workplace during which no work is done but for which payment is made under a guaranteed employment contract; paid study or training periods and leave; paid vacation and holidays; and any other of time paid for by the employer. Excluded are short rest periods and meal breaks, time spent on industrial disputes (if unpaid), and time spent on unpaid leave for sickness or accident, occupational injury or illness, maternity or parental leave, unpaid layoff or short-time working and weekly rest days.

Compensation of employees

In addition to employees' gross earnings, data are collected on employers' contributions to the following funds: social insurance fund, medical fund, provident or pension fund, annual leave with pay and public holiday funds, and redundancy and industrial training funds. Each of these five types of funds are separately identified. Data are collected separately for each full-time employee, along with information on occupation and sex.

International recommendations

The definition of earnings conforms to the international recommendations. It includes both regular earnings in cash and in kind, as well as the weekly or monthly portion (1/52 in the case of wage earners and 1/12 in the case of salaried employees) of annual bonuses and allowances. The definition of rates of pay used in this survey is broader than the concept of wage rates recommended in the international guidelines, as it includes not only regularly paid and guaranteed allowances, but also the amount or the portion of all bonuses and allowances paid for normal periods of time. This notion of rates of pay is close to that of straight-time earnings, i.e. earnings for normal hours worked, than that of wage rates. The definition of normal hours of work conforms to the international guidelines, while that of normal hours worked and paid for plus overtime hours paid for is closer to the concept of hours paid for. The definition of compensation of employees conforms to the guidelines contained in the System of National Accounts (SNA), 1968. In addition to gross earnings, it includes employers' contributions to a number of social security schemes. Other elements of labour cost, namely the cost of workers' housing, cost of medical care and health services, cost of welfare services, cost of transport of workers, work clothes and recruitment, etc., are excluded.

Classifications

Components of labour cost / compensation of employees

Not applicable.

Industrial

Data are classified according to the International Standard Industrial Classification of all economic activities (ISIC), Rev.2, 1968, at the three-digit level.

Occupational

The data are classified at the four-digit level of the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO-88).

Others

All data are classified by employee category and by sex.

Sample size and design

Statistical unit

The sampling and reporting unit is the establishment, defined as an economic unit which engages, under a single ownership or control, in one or more economic activities at a single physical location. If an enterprise consists of more than one establishments, a separate questionnaire is completed for each of them. The unit of observation is the employee. Data are collected for each individual full-time employee present on payroll in the sampled establishments.

Survey universe / sample frame

This consists of the Registration of Establishments, which is a census of all non-agricultural establishments, and the Census of Agriculture. The frame is updated every four to five years, when new censuses are carried out, and also on the basis of the Employment Survey and other sources, so as to take into account changes in the structure of employment by industry, occupation and size of establishment. The 1989 Registration of Establishments covered 51,074 establishments, and the 1985 Census of Agriculture, 48,046 establishments. The next Registration and Census are planned for 1995 and 1994, respectively.

Sample design

The survey is based on a stratified sample. The sample frame is first divided into three size groups: small, medium and large establishments. Within each size group, the number of establishments in the sample is allocated in the ratio of 4 per cent for small establishments, 15 per cent for medium and 40 per cent for large. The sample establishments are then selected at the two- and three-digit levels of economic activity, taking into account the number of occupations and establishments for each activity group. The 1993 survey covered about 1,100 establishments, approximately 5 per cent of the total number of establishments employing two or more persons. This represented about 66,240 employees, i.e. 25 per cent of the total gainfully employed population (excluding Cypriot workers temporarily working abroad), or about 34 percent of all employees (including all 21,000 civil servants).

Field work

Data collection

Data are collected in November-December of each year, by personal interviews. The organization of the survey, completion of the questionnaires, data processing and report writing are performed by permanent members of the Department of Statistics and Research; data collection and follow-up on establishments which have changed address are carried out by interviewers recruited on a temporary basis.

Survey questionnaire

The questionnaire consists of three parts. Part I is designed to collect information on the characteristics of the establishment and contains instructions for completing the questionnaire. The other two parts relate to hourly, daily and weekly paid employees and monthly paid employees respectively. They are designed to collect the following data on each full-time employee: Explanatory notes on definitions and elements to be included are provided with the questionnaire. An interviewer's manual is also available.

Substitution of sampling units

None; there are very few cases of refusal or closure of establishments.

Data processing and editing

Data are processed by computer. Coding pertains only to the economic activity of the establishment and the occupation of the individual employee, and is verified by computer. Editing of the completed questionnaires is carried out both manually by a checker at the Office and by computer. All wage and salary increases, overtime earnings and employers' contributions exceeding a given limit are checked. In cases of missing or inconsistent data, the establishments are contacted by telephone or personal visit. In addition, since the sample establishments are the same over several years, wage and salary data for each employee are available for current and previous year and are checked for consistency.

Types of estimates

Average hours of work refer to normal hours of work per week. The normal hourly wage rate is the hourly rate of pay (see above) for normal hours of work, excluding overtime. The average normal hourly wage rate for a group of employees is obtained by dividing the total of their normal weekly wages by the total of their individual normal weekly hours. Normal weekly wages refer to the gross weekly rates of pay received for normal hours worked, excluding overtime. The average (mean) weekly wages (or average normal monthly salary) for a group of employees are obtained by dividing the total of their individual weekly wages (or monthly salaries) by the number of employees. Weekly or monthly earnings refer to the total gross weekly or monthly earnings (normal plus overtime earnings) for the actual hours worked (i.e. hours paid for), including overtime. The estimates of weekly rates of pay take into account workers who were absent for part of the reference period, but not those of earnings.

Construction of indices

Three series of index numbers of normal rates of pay and actual earnings are constructed, by sector: one for wage earners, one for salary earners and a combined index for both weekly and monthly paid employees. Combined indices of normal rates of pay and actual earnings for weekly and monthly paid employees in real terms are also compiled. The weighting of the indices for each industry has been determined from the proportions of employees in the various occupations in each industry, taking into account the sex and age distributions of these employees. The general index for each year for all industries is weighted according to the total number of employees in each industry derived from the gainfully employed population obtained from the Registration of Establishments, updated on the basis of the Employment Survey and other sources.

Weighting of sample results

There is no weighting applied to the sample results for the calculation of average rates of pay and earnings by occupation within an industry. In calculating average rates of pay and earnings for an industry, the sample averages are weighted according to the number of persons in each occupation in that industry in the Registration year. Similarly, for the average rates of pay and earnings for an occupation in all economic activities, the sample averages for that occupation in each industry are weighted by the total number of persons in that occupation in that industry in the Registration year.

Adjustments

Non-response

None.

Other bias

If an establishment changes industry, it is classified according to its new activity.

Use of benchmark data

None.

Seasonal variations

Not relevant.

Indicators of reliability of the estimates

Coverage of the sampling frame

The Registration of Establishments and the Agricultural Census provide for the complete coverage of establishments.

Sampling error / sampling variance

Not computed.

Non-response rate

About 0.5 per cent.

Non-sampling errors

It is generally believed that there are few non-sampling errors, due to proper checking of replies, coding and editing.

Conformity with other sources

Data from the survey are checked with wage and salary increases due to cost-of-living allowance, as well as with data from collective agreements for large groups of employees.

Available series

The following tables are prepared regularly: Summary tables showing: For wage and salary earners, separately, aged 18 and over: For salary earners aged 18 and over: For wage and salary earners, all ages:

History of the survey

The Survey of Wages, Salaries and Hours of work was introduced in 1956, on an annual basis. Since then, the following major changes have been inplemented:

Documentation

Department of Statistics and Research, Ministry of Finance: Labour Statistics (annual; Nicosia). The survey results are published about a year after the reference period. Published data can also be made available on diskettes and magnetic tapes.

Confidentiality / Reliability criteria

In compliance with the Statistical Law (47/1968), all data collected are treated as confidential and used only for statistical purposes. No data are published for individual enterprises, or where there are only one or two enterprises in an industrial activity, unless prior agreement has been obtained from the enterprise concerned, or in cases where the enterprise was a semi-government organization or a public company.

Other information

Data supplied to the ILO for publication

Data on average weekly hours paid for and average weekly earnings for adult wage earners (18 years and over) in non-agricultural activities, manufacturing, mining and quarrying, construction and transport, storage and communication are published in Tables 11 to 15 and 16 to 20 of the Yearbook of Labour Statistics. Data on average weekly earnings of wage earners in agriculture are published in Table 21 of the Yearbook Statistics on average wage rates, normal hours of work, average earnings and hours paid for, by occupation and industry, are published regularly in Statistics on occupational wages and hours of work and on food prices - October Inquiry results, a special supplement to the Bulletin of Labour Statistics.