Estonia

Title of the survey

Survey of Wages and Salaries.

Organization responsible

Statistical Office of Estonia.

Periodicity of the survey

Quarterly.

Objectives of the survey

To estimate the number of employees and to calculate the corresponding average earnings and hours of work.

Main labour topics covered by the survey

Employment, earnings, and hours of work.

Labour Cost was covered from 1994 to 1996 (see under History of the survey).

Reference period

Each month of each quarter.

Coverage of the survey

Geographical

The whole country.

Industrial

All branches of economic activity except the armed forces and non-profit institutions.

Establishments

All enterprises, organizations and institutions, regardless of size and ownership, except farms and the self-employed.

Persons

Employees (wage earners and salaried employees).

Occupations

Not relevant.

Concepts and definitions

Employment

Employees are all persons employed on the basis of an employment contract, a service contract and under the public service Act, for a fixed or unlimited period of time, including casual, seasonal and temporary contracts. At the enterprise level, the following categories of employees are separately identified:

full-time employees, i.e. those who have a 40-hour working week or whose working week has been shortened according to the legislation;
part-time employees, i.e. those who have a part-time workday or workweek according to their employment contract.

Employees temporarily absent with pay for vacation or holiday, sickness or accident, short-time working, etc. are included.

Employees absent from work for long periods (e.g. on maternity, extended maternity or child-care leave until the child is three-year old) and employees with an contract of agreement (without fixed working time) are excluded.

Earnings

Data are collected on gross and net monthly earnings of employees. Gross monthly earnings include:

payments for time actually worked, i.e. pay for time worked or work done, including premium pay for overtime and all regularly paid bonuses;
payments for time not worked, i.e. vacation pay, compensation and pay for work stoppage, etc.;
benefits paid to employees in case of sickness or accident, out of the social security fund;
payments in kind (food and drink, fuel, etc.).

Excluded from gross earnings are housing, transport, family and similar allowances.

Average net earnings are computed after deduction of average income taxes from gross earnings.

Wage / salary rates

Not relevant.

Hours of work

These refer to hours actually worked and include hours worked by full-time and part-time employees, overtime hours and hours worked during holiday periods or days off. Also included are short rest periods at the workplace (tea or coffee breaks) and hours spent on professional training. They exclude hours not worked because of holiday, vacation, shift, work stoppage or short time working in accordance with the legislation.

International recommendations

The concept of earnings and the definition of hours actually worked conform to the international recommendations.

Classifications

Industrial

Since 1997, data have been classified according to the Estonian Classification of Economic Activities (EMTAK), which itself is based on the Statistical Classification of economic activities of the European Communities (NACE, Rev. 1).

Occupational

Not relevant.

Others

Data are classified by type of ownership, type of enterprise, county and town, employment size (less than 20 employees, 20 to 49, and 50 or more employees) and full- and part-time employees.

Sample size and design

Statistical unit

The reporting unit is the enterprise, institution or organization as a legal person. A legal person is defined as an organization, which has property on its own, is entitled to property and non-property rights and obligations, and can be a plaintiff or a defendant in a court or court of arbitration.

Survey universe / sample frame

This consists of the Estonian Enterprise Register (EER) which was established in 1990, and contains records of all active enterprises, institutions and organizations having the status of legal persons of the Republic of Estonia, including those situated outside Estonia. In addition to enterprises, institutions and organizations, all structural units that are located at different addresses from the main enterprises and all structural units (independently from their location) whose field of activity differs from that of the main enterprise, are subject to registering. In 1998, the EER comprised some 42,800 units, classified as enterprises, institutions, organizations, establishments and farms. These units are further classified by type of ownership as follows:

public property, of which:
- state property,
- municipal property,
private property, of which:
- Estonian private property,
- foreign property,
- other (special cases difficult to classify).

The EER is updated on a continuous basis and the number of units contained therein is published each quarter.

Sample design

Since the first quarter of 1997, private enterprises with more than 49 employees and all state and municipal enterprises, organisations and institutions are covered by complete enumeration. Enterprises with less than 50 employees are covered by a sample survey, stratified by main economic activity.

In 1998, 4,374 units with more than 49 employees were surveyed while a sample of some 3,900 units with less than 50 employees was selected from a total of 38,455 units.

From 1993 to 1996, the sample survey covered enterprises, institutions and organisations with less than 20 employees (excluding enterprises and institutions of state and municipal ownership).

Field work

Data collection

Data collection is carried out by means of mailed questionnaires and takes place during the month following the reference quarter.

Survey questionnaire

Not available.

Substitution of sampling units

In case of total non-response, sampling units are not replaced and imputation is used (see below, under Adjustments).

Data processing and editing

Data are processed by computer. Questionnaires are edited both manually and by computer. In case of missing or inconsistent data, contacts are made by telephone.

Types of estimates

Average number of employees (full-time, part-time, and total in full-time equivalents).

Average hours actually worked per employee per quarter.

Average gross and net monthly and hourly earnings.

The monthly average of employees is the quotient of the sum of the number of employees on each calendar day of the month and the number of calendar days. The number of employees during holidays is equal to the number of employees on the previous workday.

Part-time employees are counted as full-time equivalents proportionally to their working time.

Average number of employees and average monthly earnings by quarter are obtained by summing the original data for each month of the quarter and dividing by three.

Since 1996, average earnings are calculated on the basis of the average number of full- and part-time employees with an employment contract, a service contract and working under the public service Act. In 1994 and 1995, they were calculated on the basis of the average number of full- and part-time employees with an employment contract only; and in 1992 and 1993, on the basis of the reports on the average number of main-job employees presented by employers.

Construction of indices

The following wage indices are computed:

a quarterly index of average gross earnings by economic activity, in nominal and real terms, base 1992=100, for the period 1992-1997;
a quarterly index of average gross earnings, in nominal and real terms, base 4th quarter of 1991=100, for the period 1991-1998;
a monthly index of average gross earnings, in nominal and real terms, base January 1997=100.

Weighting of sample results

Within each stratum, data obtained from the sample are extrapolated using the Horvitz-Thompson estimator, where the weighting factor is the reciprocal of the sampling fraction, adjusted by a coefficient denoting the summation of all units in the sample.

Adjustments

Non-response

A distinction is made between non-respondents surveyed by sampling, and those fully enumerated.

In the first case, missing data are dealt with by imputation of the corresponding means of the active respondents.

If the non-response relates to a unit belonging to the totally surveyed part of the population, imputation through the hot deck method is used. If the number of employees of a non-respondent exceeds 100, the missing data of this unit are imputed by the same unit's data for the previous period.

Other bias

No adjustments are made for any other bias.

Use of benchmark data

Not relevant.

Seasonal variations

No adjustments are made for seasonal variations.

Indicators of reliability of the estimates

Coverage of the sampling frame

The Estonian Enterprise Register provides for complete coverage of units.

Sampling error / sampling variance

Estimates of the standard and relative errors of average monthly and hourly earnings and average hours actually worked are computed each quarter, by branch of economic activity, using the SUDAAN software package.

Sampling variance is also calculated.

For the 3rd quarter of 1998, the overall relative error of gross and net monthly earnings was 1.1%, that of hourly earnings was 1.2% and that of average hours actually worked per employee, 0.4%.

Non-response rate

In the third quarter 1998, the response rate of the fully enumerated units was 91.7%, and that of the sampled units, 51.4%.

Non-sampling errors

Not available.

Conformity with other sources

Not relevant.

Available series

Published quarterly and yearly data include average number of employees, average hours actually worked, and average gross and net monthly and hourly earnings of full-time and part-time employees, by branch of economic activity and by county and town; index of earnings by economic activity; distribution of gross earnings by economic activity.

History of the survey

The private sector has been covered since 1992.

Other major changes have been implemented as follows:

The calculation of average gross earnings by economic activity began in the third quarter of 1992. Previously, the calculation was done by branches of the national economy.
From 1992 to 1996, data were classified according to the International Standard Industrial Classification of all economic activities (ISIC), Rev.3, 1990.

Labour cost: In 1994, 1995 and 1996 one question about total labour cost was included in the survey questionnaire of wages and salaries.

Labour cost was defined as the employer's total cost for the following expenditure:

payments to employees for time actually worked or work done,
remuneration for time not worked,
payments to persons working with a contract of agreement,
social tax to the State budget (33% of the total payroll),
severance pay to employees according to Articles 82 and 90 of the Labour Contract Law,
employers' subsidies for the transport of employees to and from work,
employers' allowances paid to employees in case of occupational injury,
employers' allowances to employees for sick leave or child-care leave,
allowances for pensioners,
one-time allowances to employees, which are not included in payments for time worked and not worked,
cost of vocational training,
employers' contributions to the pension funds of foreign countries,
study allowances, and
fees, pay and premiums paid to board members of joint-stock companies.

In 1997, this question was excluded from the questionnaire and the Statistical Office of Estonia conducted a pilot Labour Cost survey. A full Labour Cost survey will be conducted in 2001 with reference to 2000.

Documentation

Statistical Office of Estonia: Wages and Salaries (quarterly; Tallinn); quarterly and monthly statistics are published about four months after the reporting quarter.

idem: Wages and Salaries (annual; ibid.); published about eight months after the reference year.

idem: Estonian Statistics (monthly, ibid.); published about three months after the reference quarter.

idem: Statistical Yearbook (annual; ibid.).

Web-site address: http://www.stat.vil.ee

Confidentiality / Reliability criteria

Data in respect of a single establishment are not disseminated.

Other information

Data supplied to the ILO for publication

The following data are published in the Yearbook of Labour Statistics:

Paid employment,

Average weekly hours actually worked of employees,

Average monthly earnings of employees,

by economic activity and in manufacturing, by industry group.

The corresponding quarterly series of average gross monthly earnings are published in the relevant tables of the ILO Bulletin of Labour Statistics.

Statistics of average hourly labour cost in manufacturing (according to the above-mentioned definition) for the years 1994 to 1996 are also published in the Yearbook of Labour Statistics.

Other sources of data

In addition to the Wages and Salaries survey, an Hourly wages and salaries survey is conducted each year since 1992, with reference to the month of October.

The main objective of this survey is to collect data on the number of employees, gross earnings and hours of work by sex for some 200 selected occupations within ten major groups of occupations based on ISCO-1988, for full-time and part-time employees.

Data are collected on gross hourly earnings. The definition of earnings corresponds to that of the above-mentioned survey. The survey also collects data on hours actually worked.

The establishment and industrial coverage is the same as that of the above-mentioned survey. The sampling criteria are the main economic activity of an enterprise, institution and organisation and the corresponding number of employees.

The methods used for data collection and processing are identical to those of the quarterly survey. Sampling is used for enterprises, institutions and organisations with less than 20 employees (excluding enterprises and institutions in state and municipal ownership), while state and municipal enterprises and enterprises, institutions and organisations of other types of ownership with more than 19 employees are included with certainty in the sample.

Prior to 1997, the survey data referred to December (in 1992) and November (in 1993).

For the first time in 1997, the survey provided data on the distribution of employees according to 21 wage and salary groups, cross-classified by full- and part-time, sex, economic activity and occupational group.

The survey results are published once a year in the Hourly wages and salaries (Statistical Office of Estonia) (October; Tallinn).

They are also 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.