Czech Republic - 1
Title of the survey
Report on Employment and Wages.
Organization responsible
Czech Statistical Office.
Periodicity of the survey
Quarterly and yearly.
Objectives of the survey
To obtain information on total employment, the number of
employees and their average gross earnings.
Main labour topics covered by the survey
Employment and earnings (as well as hours of work of manual
workers in industry and construction).
Reference period
The full quarter in the quarterly survey; the whole year in the
annual survey.
Coverage of the survey
Geographical
The whole country.
Industrial
All branches of economic activity, except the armed forces
(professionals, soldiers of the basic military service and
policemen), household employing domestic services, embassies and
consulates.
Establishments
In agriculture, industry, construction and transport, storage and
communication: enterprises with 20 and more employees;
In services: enterprises with one and more employees;
All organisations fully or partially financed from the State or
local budget and non-profit institutions, regardless of the
number of employees.
Persons
Employees. Information is also collected on the number of other
persons engaged: working proprietors without an employment
contract, unpaid contributing family workers and commission
agents.
Excluded are persons released for the execution of public
functions and employees of security information services.
Occupations
Data are not collected by individual occupation.
Concepts and definitions
Employment
Employees are all permanent and temporary workers with an
employment relation with an employer. They include working
proprietors with an employment contract, working directors, wage
earners, salaried employees, workers on probation and piece
workers, home workers, casual, temporary and seasonal workers,
whether full- or part-time. Persons temporarily absent from work
because of paid vacation, industrial dispute, sickness or
accident, etc., persons temporarily present on payroll during
notice period preceding retirement, resignation or dismissal, and
persons on temporary military service are included.
Excluded from employees are: apprentices, trainees, workers
sub-contracted from other enterprises or from temporary work
agencies, persons absent from work for unpaid vacation or holiday
(for more than four weeks), maternity leave, parental and
additional leave.
The average registered number of employees in a month equals the
total number of employees on each calendar day of the month,
divided by the full number of calendar days in that month (for
weekend days and holidays, the number of employees is the same as
that of the previous working day) - or the average of the number
of employees at the beginning and at the end of the survey month.
Data on the number of employees by sex are collected as of 31
December of each year.
Earnings
Data are collected on gross earnings (i.e. before deduction of
employees' personal income taxes and contributions to social
security schemes, pension funds and similar schemes). They
include:
- direct wages and salaries for time worked or work done,
including overtime pay, premium pay for shift, night or holiday
work, commissions, regular bonuses, and cost-of-living allowance,
- remuneration for time not worked (annual leave, vacation,
public holidays and other time off with pay),
- irregular bonuses and premiums (year-end, seasonal and
similar bonuses, profit-sharing bonuses); and
- the value of some payments in kind (food and drink, fuel);
Excluded from gross earnings are housing and transport allowances
and the value of certain payments in kind (e.g. free or
subsidised housing, footwear and clothing). Family/children
allowances paid by the employer are not relevant in the Czech
Republic.
Wage / salary rates
Not relevant.
Hours of work
These refer to hours actually worked by manual/production workers
in industry and construction. They include:
- normal hours of work; overtime; time spent at place on
preparation of workplace, repair, maintenance, preparation and
cleaning of tools, preparation of receipts, time sheets, reports,
- time spent at the place of work waiting or standing by for
such reasons as lack of supply of work, breakdown of machinery,
or time spent at the place of work during which no work is done
but for which payment is made under a guaranteed
employment contract; and
- time corresponding to short rest periods at the workplace
including tea or coffee breaks.
In construction, data are collected each month.
In industry, data are collected each quarter, and separate data
are collected on the following components: hours not worked due
to vacation, official holidays, and sickness or injury. Each
year, data are also collected on work days in industry.
International recommendations
The definitions of earnings and hours actually worked conform to
the international guidelines, with a few minor exclusions from
earnings.
Classifications
Industrial
Data are classified at the one- and two-digit level of the Branch
Classification of Economic Activities (OKEC). This national
classification is an adaptation of the Statistical Classification
of economic activities of the European Communities (NACE, Rev.1)
which is itself based on the International Standard Industrial
Classification of all economic activities (ISIC), Rev.3.
Occupational
Not relevant.
Others
Data are classified by type of ownership, region, and according
to the European System of National and Regional Accounts
(ESA-1995). Employment data are classified by sex (number of
employees as of 31 December).
Sample size and design
Statistical unit
The sampling and reporting unit is the enterprise.
Survey universe / sample frame
This is the Business Register, which is updated on a quarterly
basis from the trade courts, the trade licence offices and the
Czech Administration of Social Security.
Sample design
A stratified random sampling is used. Enterprises are stratified
by SNA sector (at the first digit level of the System of National
Accounts), by economic activity at the two- and three-digit level
of OKEC, by legal status of enterprises (shareholding and
non-shareholding enterprises), and employment size.
In general, all large enterprises and organisations are fully
enumerated, and a sample is drawn from smaller enterprises (below
20 or 50 employees). The sampling fraction varies with the
economic activity.
Field work
Data collection
The survey is conducted by mailed questionnaires. A permanent
organisation is responsible for data collection. The survey
forms are to be returned within 2 to 4 weeks following the
reference quarter in the quarterly surveys, and within 2 months
following the reference year in the annual survey.
Survey questionnaire
Available in Czech.
Substitution of sampling units
No substitution is applied.
Data processing and editing
Quality controls are carried out on the questionnaire and 7-level
quality codes are applied. The data are checked and edited
through field work, by the CSO regional centres. Inconsistent or
missing data are followed up through telephone calls or mail.
Consistency and logic checks are carried out.
Types of estimates
Total employment, number of employees, average gross monthly
earnings and average hours actually worked.
In enterprises with 20 or more employees, part-time workers are
converted to full-time equivalents.
Construction of indices
An index of average gross nominal wages and salaries is computed.
Weighting of sample results
Within each stratum, data obtained from the sample are
extrapolated by means of the Horvitz-Thompson estimator, applying
a coefficient, which corresponds to the ratio of the total number
of enterprises in the stratum to the number of responding
enterprises.
Adjustments
Non-response
An adjustment for total non-response in provided for in the
weighting procedure: the weights of the different strata are
corrected according to the response rate.
Other bias
Adjustments are made in cases of significant changes in the
economic classification or extreme values in the replies of
respondents with a high rate of representativeness.
Use of benchmark data
Employment data from the Czech Administration of Social Security
are used as benchmark to adjust the survey results.
Seasonal variations
The survey results are not adjusted for seasonal variations.
Indicators of reliability of the estimates
Coverage of the sampling frame
Total coverage is aimed at through the regular updating of the
Business Register.
Sampling error / sampling variance
Not available.
Non-response rate
Not available.
Non-sampling errors
Inaccuracies may occur because of erroneous reporting on economic
classification of units in the Register.
Conformity with other sources
The survey results are compared with the results of other surveys
that collect similar data (monthly enterprise surveys in
industry, construction, trade and services, or labour force
sample surveys).
Available series
Published quarterly and yearly data include average number of
employees, and average gross monthly earnings by branch of
economic activity.
History of the survey
Annual time series of employment have been available since 1948,
and average gross monthly earnings since 1955.
Until 1989, the survey covered the whole socialist sector. Since
1990, the statistical reporting system has undergone adjustments
in response to the reform of the economy. In particular, the
following changes were brought to the industrial coverage and
classification:
In the enterprise sectors, the statistics covered:
- enterprises with 100 and more employees in 1990 and 1991;
- from 1992, enterprises with 25 and more employees;
- enterprises with 100 and more employees in 1995 and 1996 in
industry, trade, hotels and restaurants;
- since 1997, enterprises with 20 and more employees, including
employees of unincorporated private entrepreneurs; and in
financial intermediation, all enterprises irrespective of the
number of employees.
In the non-business sphere, all organisations funded fully or
partially from the state or local budget and non-profit
institutions (e.g. health insurance companies), excluding the
armed forces, are covered.
From 1992, the Branch Classification of Economic Activities was
introduced to supersede the so-called Unified Classification of
National Economy Branches.
Documentation
Czech Statistical Office: Yearbook of the Czech Republic
(annual, Prague);
idem: Monthly Statistics of the Czech Republic
(ibid.).
Quarterly data are published some 70 to 80 days after the survey
reference period; annual data are published some 11 to 12 months
after the reference year.
Statistics on the number of employees and their average earnings,
by branch of economic activity according to NACE, Rev.1, can be
made available upon request, and on diskette. They are also
regularly shown on Internet at the following address:
http://www.czso.cz
See also:
CESTAT Statistical Bulletin, publication prepared jointly by the
Czech Statistical Office, the Hungarian Central Statistical
Office, the Central Statistical Office of Poland, the National
Commission for Statistics of Romania, the Statistical Office of
the Republic of Slovenia and the Statistical Office of the Slovak
Republic (quarterly).
Confidentiality / Reliability criteria
The surveys are conducted under the Act on the State Statistical
Service No. 89/1995, which defines the rights and obligations of
the Czech Statistical Office towards reporting units. It
contains directives on the independence of the CSO and the
protection of individual respondents' data.
Other information
Data supplied to the ILO for publication
The following data are published in the
Yearbook of Labour Statistics:
Average number of employees by economic activity and average
number of wage-earners in manufacturing, by sex;
Average weekly hours actually worked by wage earners, in industry
only and in manufacturing, by industry group;
Average monthly earnings of employees by economic activity, and
average monthly earnings of wage earners in manufacturing by sex
and industry group.
The corresponding quarterly data
are published in the relevant tables of the
Bulletin of Labour Statistics.
Other sources of data
A Structure of Earnings Survey is conducted by the Czech
Statistical Office each year. The results are published in:
Czech Statistical Office: Structure of Earnings Survey (annual);
both Czech and English versions are available.
A survey entitled Information system on the average earnings is
also conducted by the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs each
year. It provides data on hourly and monthly earnings and normal
hours of work by occupation. The results of this survey, with
reference to the third quarter of each year, are published in
Statistics on occupational wages and hours of work and on food prices - October Inquiry results, a special supplement to the ILO Bulletin of Labour Statistics.