Israel

Title of the survey

Value of Sales, Employment and Wages in Industry and Craft Establishments

Organization responsible

Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS)

Periodicity of the survey

Monthly.

Objectives of the survey

To obtain current data on level of employment, wages, hours of work and labour cost in industry. The data are used for economic planning and for determining the various allowances of the National Insurance Institute.

Main labour topics covered by the survey

Employment, earnings, hours of work and labour cost.

Reference period

The month.

Coverage of the survey

Geographical

The whole country.

Industrial

Mining and manufacturing excluding the diamond industry.

Establishments

All establishments employing one or more employees.

Persons

All persons engaged.

Occupations

Data are not collected by occupation.

Concepts and definitions

Employment

Data are collected separately on the following three groups of persons engaged: Excluded from persons engaged are unpaid qibbuz members and self-employed persons employed in piecework for an establishment.

Earnings

Data are collected on gross wages and salaries of all Israeli employees only. Gross wages and salaries are all payments made to all employees in a month, including basic salary, cost-of-living, professional, seniority and family allowances (excl. employees' children allowance), bus fare, premiums, bonuses and overtime payments, absence (such as leave, sickness, etc.), convalescence, 13th month salary, maintenance of vehicle (including allocation for employer's vehicles used by the employee), telephone, clothing, lodging (on which only income tax is due) and payments in kind (e.g. meals, presents, housing, etc.). Data are collected separately on:

Wage/salary rates

Not relevant.

Hours of work

Data are collected on actual working hours or days of all employees for whom there are records of working hours or days. They correspond to paid hours or days worked during normal periods of work, paid overtime, time spent at place of work for preparation of workplace, repairs, maintenance, preparation and cleaning of tools, preparation of receipts, time sheets and reports; time spent at the workplace during which no work is performed (for reasons such as breakdown of machinery, lack of supply of materials or clients, bad weather) or for which payment is made under a guaranteed employment contract, time corresponding to short rest periods at the workplace including tea or coffee breaks and meal breaks. They exclude hours or days paid for but not worked for vacation, holidays, sickness or accident etc., and hours worked or days of owners and their family members. In establishments where recording is based on working days, overtime is calculated in terms of days, by dividing the number of overtime hours worked by the number of regular work hours per day. Data on the number of actual working hours or days are collected separately for Israeli employees and employees residents of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza area.

Labour cost

Labour cost data are collected separately for Israeli employees and for employees residents of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza area. For Israeli employees, labour cost includes: For other employees, labour cost includes total gross wages and all employer's allocations to the Employment Service and other funds. Statistics of average labour cost cover all employees together.

International recommendations

The definition of earnings complies with the international recommendations, and includes both regular and non-regular payments. Non-recurrent and retroactive payments are distributed over a four-month period or over the entire year (see below, under Types of estimates). The notion of actual working hours is close to the definition of hours actually worked recommended by the international guidelines, except that meal breaks are included in the present definition. The components of labour cost follow the international guidelines. In principle, all the components identified in the International Standard Classification of Labour Cost (ISCLC-1966), where applicable, are covered by the definition.

Classifications

Components of labour cost / compensation of employees

Data are not classified by components of labour cost.

Industrial

Since 1995, all data are classified according to the National Standard Industrial Classification of All Economic Activities, 1993. This classification is convertible to the International Standard Industrial Classification of all economic activities (ISIC) Rev.3, 1990.

Occupational

Not relevant.

Others

Data are also classified by:

Sample size and design

Statistical unit

The establishment, defined as an economic activity at one site, performing one industrial activity and keeping separate accounts. A division of a firm which is a productive unit on its own, is considered as a separate establishment.

Survey universe / sample frame

The sample is drawn from a list of establishments received by the CBS from the National Insurance Institute (NII), where one or more employee files in each establishment with at least one employee are opened. These lists are updated every two months according to the updated records from the NII. The population of establishments does not include establishments of self-employed who do not engage employees, non-profit establishments and auxiliary units in qibbuzim serving their qibbuz only, which do not market their produce, such as sewing shops, locksmiths' workshops, etc.

Sample design

The survey is based on a stratified sampling design, each stratum being characterized by economic activity and size of employment. All establishments employing 75 or more employees are included with certainty in the sample. These establishments include about 57 per cent of all the employed persons in industry. Also included with certainty are units of economic bodies having more than one National Insurance file. The remaining establishments are divided into sampling strata according to their size in the various branches. The sampling fractions ranged between 1/2 of all the large establishments (with 50-74 employed persons) in the branch and 1/40 of all the small establishments in the branch. The sample comprises about 2,400 active establishments which cover about 70 per cent of all the employed persons of the population in review. It is regularly updated by inclusion of a sample of newly created establishments and by exclusion of establishments which ceased operating. It is completely renewed every ten years.

Field work

Data collection

Takes place monthly, by mailed questionnaires, followed up by telephone calls and personal interview.

Survey questionnaire

This collects information on the following items: value of sales - both in cash and liabilities; number of persons engaged by category; hours of work and wages and salaries of employees; other labour expenses. Explanatory notes on the inclusions and exclusions of the different components of data are provided along with the questionnaire.

Substitution of sampling units

There is no substitution of sampling units in case of total non-response. Imputations are made for establishments which have not reported on time.

Data processing and editing

Data are processed by computer and checked by machine edit. There is no coding. Consistency checks are made generally by telephone. Missing data are dealt with by a computer package.

Types of estimates

Totals and hourly and monthly averages are estimated for employment, earnings, hours of work and labour cost. In general, non-recurrent and retroactive payments relate to a period of several months. As it is not possible to receive from the establishments the exact distribution of these payments for the months to which they relate, since these amounts fluctuate considerably, a moving average of the non-recurrent and retroactive payments of the last four months (the reporting month and the previous three months) is included monthly in wages. For some establishments, these data are distributed over the entire year. Average hourly wages are obtained by dividing the total gross wages and salaries (including the smoothed non-recurrent payments) by the number of hours actually worked by all employees.

Construction of indices

In addition to the industrial production indices, the following indices are calculated monthly: The index of hourly labour cost is calculated as the ratio between the index of total labour cost and the index of paid working hours of all employees. The index of wages per paid working hour is obtained by dividing the index of wages of employees (other than the non-recurrent payments and backpay for previous periods) by the index of paid working hours of employees (actual hours worked and hours of paid absence).

Weighting of sample results

The sample results are multiplied by the reciprocal of the sampling fraction, at the minor branch, major branch and total industry levels.

Adjustments

Non-response

None.

Other bias

None.

Use of benchmark data

Not relevant.

Seasonal variations

Indices of number of employees and hours worked are seasonally adjusted, using the X-11 ARIMA programme from Statistics Canada.

Indicators of reliability of the estimates

Coverage of the sampling frame

It is expected to cover all establishments within the scope of the survey. However a certain time lag may occur between the birth of an establishment and its inclusion in the sampling frame.

Sampling error / sampling variance

In the 1990 sample, calculations of the sampling errors for employees' posts showed a sampling error of 0.73 per cent in levels, and 0.25 per cent in monthly changes.

Non-response rate

Ten per cent on average.

Non-sampling errors

Inaccuracies may occur because of limitations in the preparation of the frame (difficulties in collecting of material, errors of industry classification, etc.), incomplete reporting or misinterpretation of questionnaires by respondents, or errors in the processing of collected data.

Conformity with other sources

The survey results are compared with employment and wages data derived from the Labour Force Survey and the NII reports.

Available series

The following tables are prepared regularly, by major branch of economic activity:

History of the survey

The series of monthly industrial indices was introduced in 1958. The questionnaire design was changed in 1985. Until 1994, the industrial classification was the Standard Classification of all Economic Activities, 1970. As of 1995, it is the 1993 Classification. Due to the introduction of the new Standard Classification, the sample was renewed as of January 1995. This follows the 1990 renewal and the usual 10-year period between new samples. The drawing of the new sample was preceded by several measures which were taken in order to make the sampling more efficient, to improve the quality of estimates which were obtained for various economic branches and to enable estimates to be made at the minor branch level (at the three-digit level of the classification) in some major branches.

Documentation

Central Bureau of Statistics: Monthly Bulletin of Statistics (monthly, Jerusalem); idem: Supplement to the Monthly Bulletin of Statistics Vol.XLV, No. 8, August 1994 (ibid.); this publication contains methodological details; idem: Statistical Abstract of Israel (annual, ibid.). Unpublished data can also be made available on diskette, magnetic tape, subject to confidentiality considerations.

Confidentiality / Reliability criteria

The information provided by the establishments is confidential and used only for statistical purposes. It will not be published in a manner which might enable identification of individual establishments.

Other information

Data supplied to the ILO for publication

The following series are published in the Yearbook of Labour Statistics: Monthly series of average hourly earnings of employees in manufacturing are published in Table 8 of the Bulletin of Labour Statistics.