Hong Kong, China (3)
Title of the survey
Annual Survey of Industrial Production
Organization responsible
Census and Statistics Department, Industrial Production Statistics
Section.
Periodicity of the survey
Annual.
Objectives of the survey
To compile statistics on the operating characteristics and structure of
the industrial activities covered, to assess the contribution of these
activities to the Gross Domestic Product and to collect commodity
details of industrial production.
The statistics compiled are useful to both the government and the
private sector in formulating policies and making decisions.
Main labour topics covered by the survey
Number of persons engaged and compensation of
employees;
Other topics: Output, cost structure and other salient
operating features.
Reference period
The calendar year, or any 12-month period between 1 January of a given
year and 31 March of the following year, according to accounting
practices of individual establishments.
For establishments which commenced or ceased operation within their
respective accounting periods, data are collected for that part of the
period during which the establishments are in operation.
Coverage of the survey
Geographical
The whole territory.
Industrial
Mining and quarrying, manufacturing, and electricity, gas and water.
Establishments
All types and sizes of establishments in operation during the
reference period, in both the private and public sectors.
Persons
All persons engaged.
Occupations
Not relevant.
Concepts and definitions
Employment
Data refer to all persons engaged, i.e. the total number of
working proprietors, active partners and unpaid family workers, plus the
number of employees averaged over the four quarters covered by the
reporting period.
Among all persons engaged, employees, of which operatives and other
employees, are separately identified.
Operatives comprise all employees directly engaged in production or in
activities directly auxiliary to production, such as machine operators,
craftsmen, repairing, testing and packaging workers, chargehands,
foremen, technicians and inspectors.
Other employees comprise professional and administrative personnel (such
as managers, engineers, accountants and executives), clerical and
related workers, and others (such as salesmen, drivers, watchmen and
receptionists).
Other persons engaged comprise working proprietors and active partners
(i.e. individual proprietors and partners, whether drawing regular
salaries or not, who are actively engaged in the work of the
establishment), and unpaid family workers (i.e. persons having family
ties with the proprietors or partners and working in the establishment
for at least three hours each day without regular pay). These two
categories are not applicable to limited companies.
Employees are divided into full-time and part-time workers. Part-time
workers are those who work for three to five hours each day.
Excluded from the number of persons engaged are workers who work for
less than three hours each day; persons who are on indefinite lay-off
and on pension; employees posted in overseas offices and outworkers who
work in their own premises on materials supplied by the establishment.
Compensation of employees
It corresponds to the sum of gross cash wages and salaries paid to
operatives and other employees, payments in kind, employers' social
security expenditure, and payments to outworkers. The following
components are separately identified:
- Gross cash wages and salaries: these include basic wages and
salaries for time worked or work done, overtime payments, commissions,
bonuses, gratuities, severance and termination pay, and all cash
allowances such as cost-of-living allowance, food, accommodation and
transport allowances. Also included are payments to gang leaders and
their assistance for work performed inside the establishment, if such
workers are counted under the number of operatives.
- Payments in kind and employers' social security expenditure, where
- payments in kind refer to the net cost to the employer in providing
housing, food, transport and other goods and services to employees free
of charge or at markedly reduced prices;
- employers' social security expenditure includes the employer's share
in the contributions to provident and retirement funds; premiums
for employees' compensation insurance; direct compensatory payments for
injury or occupational diseases and cost of medical care and health
services.
Data are collected separately for operatives, other employees and
outworkers (generally on a piece-rate basis).
Other elements of labour cost, namely the cost of vocational training,
the cost of establishment owned dwellings, the cost of grants and
related services for employees and taxes on employment or payroll,
are excluded.
Hours of work
For each category of employees (operatives and other employees,
full-time and part-time workers), data are collected on:
- the number of normal working hours per day or shift; these represent
the number of hours regularly worked per day or shift, in excess of
which any time worked is counted as overtime;
- the total number of overtime hours worked by operatives of all
shifts, and by all other employees, during the reporting period;
- the number of days worked during the reporting period, i.e. the
number of days an average employee actually attends work during the
period covered by the questionnaire. A half-day worked is counted as
such.
International recommendations
The concept of compensation of employees used in this industrial
survey is in line with the guidelines contained in the System of
National Accounts (SNA), 1993.
The definitions of normal hours of work and overtime hours used in this
survey correspond to the concept of "hours paid for".
Classifications
Components of labour cost / compensation of employees
Data on compensation of employees are classified by main components
(i.e. wages and salaries in cash, including allowances, bonuses, and
severance and termination pay; payments in kind and employers'
social security expenditure; and payments to outworkers).
Industrial
Data on employment and compensation of employees are classified
according to the Hong Kong Standard Industrial Classification (HSIC),
which basically follows the International Standard Industrial
Classification of all economic activities (ISIC), Rev.2, 1968, with some
slight modifications.
Establishments in the manufacturing sector are classified into 161
industry groups (at the four-digit industry code), then aggregated into
26 major industry groups and further into ten broad industry groups.
Occupational
Not relevant.
Others
Type of ownership, geographic district, number of persons engaged,
value of gross output, value added, percentage share of overseas
interest, and various cross-classifications.
Sample size and design
Statistical unit
The unit of inquiry is the establishment, defined
as an economic unit
engaged, under a single ownership or control, in one or predominantly
one kind of economic activity, at a single physical location.
Where separate figures relating to different activities or different
locations under the same management are not available, a combined return
is accepted and in this case, the reporting unit is treated as an
establishment.
Survey universe / sample frame
For mining and quarrying, the list of operating establishments is
provided to the Census and Statistics Department by the Mines Division
of the Civil Engineering Department.
For manufacturing, the Census and Statistics Department maintains and
updates a comprehensive register of all manufacturing establishments, on
the basis of the records of the Business Registration Office of the
Inland Revenue Department, and the factory registration system of the
Labour Department.
The list of establishments engaged in the manufacture and distribution
of electricity and gas is compiled by the C&SD based on returns from
utility companies and major oil suppliers. Water supplies data are
provided by the Water Supplies Department.
These registers cover industrial establishments operated by private
business concerns, as well as government and non-profit institutions.
Based on the results of the 1991 Survey,
the total number of operating establishments was estimated to
be 43,969.
Sample design
Establishments in mining and quarrying, electricity and gas, government
industrial undertakings and non-profit institutions, are enumerated in
full. Government industrial undertakings include one quarry, one
printing house, 19 prison workshops (treated collectively as one
establishment), one abattoir and one water works establishments.
Non-profit institutions include welfare institution workshops operated
by the Social Welfare Department and some voluntary agents.
In manufacturing (other than government and non-profit institutions),
the sampling frame is stratified by industry group and, within each
industry group, by employment size range. The sample size of each
stratum is determined by Neyman's allocation according to a desired
level of precision for the estimated value added of each industry group.
Individual establishments are systematically selected from each stratum
at a uniform interval after a random start. Altogether, 7,963
establishments were selected for enumeration in 1991, i.e. about 18 per
cent of the total number of operating establishments.
The total number of establishments operated in 1991 was subsequently
estimated to be 43,893.
Field work
Data collection
Survey questionnaires are mailed in April of each year to sampled
establishments which are asked to complete and return them by 31 July.
In May, staff of the Census and Statistics Department start to visit
sampled establishments to assist respondents in completing
questionnaires or to collect completed forms. Reminder letters are
issued during different stages of the survey to urge respondents to
respond early.
Survey questionnaire
It consists of two parts: the main part for collecting basic data
(establishment characteristics, employment, compensation of employees,
payments to outworkers, payments for services rendered by other
establishments, other operating expenses, as well as purchases, sales
and production, book value of stocks, capital expenditure, etc.), and
the second part containing supplementary questions on specific topics.
It is accompanied with explanations on the objective and coverage
of the survey, definitions of the terms used and instructions on how
to evaluate values, receipts and expenditure.
Substitution of sampling units
Not relevant.
Data processing and editing
Completed questionnaires are subject to thorough checking by office
staff and detailed validation checks by computer before tabulation.
Checks include completeness of entries, consistency among data items and
credibility of reported data. For establishments with high gross output
values, all dubious entries are clarified with respondents by telephone
or field verification visits. For establishments with low gross output
values, the more serious reporting errors are rectified by respondents,
while the less serious errors are corrected by imputation from the
accepted data of similar establishments.
Types of estimates
- Total of number of persons engaged and average number of employees.
- Totals of compensation of employees and averages per employee and
per year.
Construction of indices
Not relevant.
Weighting of sample results
The estimated compensation of employees in a particular stratum is
derived by summing the product of compensation of employee for each
sampled establishment and its corresponding grossing-up factor, which
is the reciprocal of the sampling fraction.
Adjustments
Non-response
The economic contributions of
non-reporting establishments are imputed from the cost and production
patterns displayed by reporting establishments of the same industry
group and employment size group.
Other bias
Not applicable.
Use of benchmark data
Not relevant.
Use of other surveys
Not relevant.
Indicators of reliability of the estimates
Coverage of the sampling frame
Coverage is virtually complete.
Sampling error / sampling variance
The relative standard error of estimates of compensation of employees
computed from the 1991 survey, was 1.01 per cent for all manufacturing
industries, with a 95 per cent confidence interval (calculated on the
basis of reporting establishments).
Non-response rate
For the 1991 survey, 6,212 establishments had completed and returned
their questionnaires by late March 1993, out of 7,963 establishments
selected for enumeration in the sample survey; 684 establishments
(about 8.6 per cent) had failed to respond or could not be located, and
1,067 were found to have never operated during the survey reference
period or to have fallen outside the scope of the survey.
Non-sampling errors
Not relevant.
Conformity with other sources
Not relevant.
Estimates for non-survey years
Not relevant.
Available series
Regular tables include:
- Principal statistics for all establishments, analysed by industry
sector,
- Principal statistics for all manufacturing establishments, analysed
by broad and major industry group, type of ownership, district, number
of persons engaged, value of gross output, value added, percentage share
of overseas interest,
- Inter-industry comparison of compensation of employees, gross
surplus, gross output and value added per person engaged,
- Various cross-classifications of the principal statistics.
The term principal statistics includes, among other data, the number
of establishments, the number of persons engaged and total compensation
of employees.
History of the survey
The Annual Survey of Industrial Production was first conducted in
1974 for the year 1973. For 1974 and 1975, the survey covered the
textiles and clothing industries only. Since 1976, it has been
conducted each year on a regular basis.
As from the 1984 survey, new definitions have been adopted for different
topics covered by the survey, such as for purchases of materials,
supplies and industrial work or services, or gross output. As from the
1986 survey, revised terms have been adopted, but the definitions
remained unchanged.
Since the 1987 survey, the electricity and gas sector includes
establishments engaged in the distribution of liquefied petroleum gas
(LPG) through systems of mains.
Prior to 1990, statistics were classified according to the
International Standard Industrial Classification of All Economic
Activities (ISIC), Rev. 2, 1968. As from the 1990 survey, the HSIC was
adopted for compiling and publishing statistics. Data for the years
prior to 1990 have been recompiled in HSIC to facilitate comparisons.
Documentation
Census and Statistics Department: Report on the Survey of
Industrial Production (annual, Hong Kong). It is published about
20 months after the end of the reference year of the survey.
idem: Annual Digest of Statistics (annual, ibid.).
The 1993 edition
contains principal statistics from the 1991 Survey.
Unpublished tables are also available upon request to
the Industrial Production Statistics Section of the Census and
Statistics Department.
Confidentiality / Reliability criteria
The Survey is conducted under the Census and Statistics (Annual Survey
of Industrial Production) Order 1984, made under the
Census and Statistics Ordinance. The Ordinance provides for the
collection of specified data from respondents and obliges the Census and
Statistics Department to preserve the confidentiality of information of
individual establishments.
For confidentiality reasons, data cells relating to one or two
establishments are suppressed from publication, except for the number of
establishments and persons engaged. The suppressed statistics are,
nevertheless, included in the respective totals at some broader level of
classification.
Other information
Data supplied to the ILO for publication
Statistics of average compensation of employees in manufacturing, per
employee and per year, are published in tables 22A and 22B of the
Yearbook of Labour Statistics. In this publication, data
exclude payments made to outworkers.
Other sources of data
Statistics of the number of persons engaged and
compensation of employees are also compiled for other divisions of
economic activity, through a series of annual industrial surveys such
as: the Survey of Wholesale and Retail Trades, Restaurants and Hotels;
the Survey of Transport and Related Services; the Survey of Storage,
Communications, Financing, Insurance and Business Services, and the
Survey on Building and Construction.
These statistics are published in the relevant survey reports and in
Census and Statistics Department: Annual Digest of Statistics
(Hong Kong).