Jordan (1)

Title of the survey

Employment Survey for Establishments engaging five persons or more.

Organization responsible

Department of Statistics.

Periodicity of the survey

Annual.

Objectives of the survey

To provide detailed data on employment, wages, hours of work and employees' compensation, by economic activity, type of ownership and employees' characteristics. The survey results are used by government agencies to formulate economic policy and primarily by analysts, planners, researchers and decision makers for the purpose of employment studies.

Main labour topics covered by the survey

Employment, earnings, hours of work and compensation of employees.

Reference period

For employment, earnings and hours of work: October of each year. For compensation of employees: October and the whole year.

Coverage of the survey

Geographical

The whole country.

Industrial

All branches of economic activity excluding agriculture, hunting, forestry and fishing; armed forces, public security and civil defence.

Establishments

All establishments employing five persons or more.

Persons

All persons engaged including foreigners.

Occupations

All occupations are covered.

Concepts and definitions

Employment

All persons engaged include working proprietors, working directors, employees and unpaid family workers. Excluded are homeworkers and expatriate workers. The distinction is made between:

unpaid employees, i.e. working proprietors and directors who do not receive a salary, unpaid family workers, unpaid trainees or apprentices, etc., and
paid employees, i.e. all employees (wage earners and salaried employees) who received wages and salaries during the reference period. Included are persons temporarily absent from work because of paid vacation or holiday, paid sick leave, etc.

Data are collected on all persons engaged (called paid and unpaid employees), by sex and nationality. In addition, data are collected on the number of paid employees, by type of work (regular or temporary), educational level and occupational group. Regular employees are persons who worked regularly at the enterprise during the reference period or spent most of the year in the job. Temporary employees are persons who worked irregularly at the enterprise during the reference period, including casual, seasonal and daily workers.

Earnings

Data are collected on total gross cash earnings defined as the total of salaries paid to employees, before any deductions are made by the employer, such as contributions of employees to social security, pensions scheme and taxes. Total gross earnings comprise regular wages in cash for normal time worked or work done, premium pay for overtime, regular allowances such as housing allowance, family allowance etc., remuneration for time not worked, as well as regularly and irregularly paid bonuses. Total earnings for normal periods of work and total overtime earnings are identified separately. Earnings data are collected by sex, nationality and type of work (regular or temporary).

Wage/salary rates

Not relevant.

Compensation of employees

Data are collected on employees' compensation both in the reference month and for the survey year. Employees' compensation includes:

Total wages and salaries (in cash);
Employers' contributions to social security;
Payments in kind, i.e. compensation for food, housing, clothes, transportation, medical services, social services, entertainment services and free tickets;
Other fringe benefits: medical insurance, occupational injury and life insurance, termination payments and other assimilated benefits.

Data cover all persons engaged.

Hours of work

Data are collected on total paid workhours during during the reference month, for all paid employees. They include normal hours (as fixed by laws and regulations), overtime hours, inactive periods of time spent at the workplace (stand by, short rest periods, study or training periods, etc.) and outside the workplace (for vacation, holidays, sickness or accident, leave, etc.), provided they are paid for. Data on hours of work are collected separately on (i) total hours for normal periods of work and (ii) total overtime hours. In both the public and private sectors, data are also collected on the average normal hours of work as well as on the total workdays and holidays during the reference month. There are normally 26 working days in October (after deduction of four fridays and one holiday for the anniversary of the Prophet's birthday). In the case of enterprises which close two days a week, the standard number of working days is 22.

International recommendations

Employment data cover all persons engaged, called employees in national publications. The definition of paid employees corresponds to that of employees or persons in paid employment contained in the UN and ILO guidelines, respectively. The notion of unpaid employees corresponds to that of other persons engaged. Earnings cover all regular and irregular payments in cash. They exclude the value of payments in kind. The definition of paid work hours corresponds to the concept of hours paid for, in that it covers paid periods of time, whether worked or not worked, during normal hours of work, and overtime hours. The definition of employees' compensation corresponds to the concept of compensation of employees contained in the UN system of National Accounts (SNA).

Classifications

Components of labour cost / compensation of employees

Total compensation of employees is classified by main components (see above, under "Concepts and definitions").

Industrial

The survey data are classified according to the International Standard Industrial Classification of all economic activities. Prior to 1992, they were classified according to ISIC, Rev.2, 1968; since 1992, ISIC, Rev.3 has been used.

Occupational

Data on employment and earnings are classified according to ISCO-88 at the major-group level and, within industry group, at the sub-major group level.

Others

Type of ownership, employment size, governorate, employees' characteristics (sex, educational level and nationality) and various cross classifications.

Sample size and design

Statistical unit

The establishment.

Survey universe / sample frame

The establishments are drawn from the records kept by the Ministry of Labour, the Social Security corporation and the Greater Amman Municipality. This frame is updated before the end of each year to take into account closing or changes in economic activity of establishments. The new frame is then divided according to geographic units in big cities such as Amman city, and finally distributed according to the Jordanian governorates.

Sample design

Prior to 1992, the survey was based on a complete enumeration of establishments employing five or more persons. Since 1992, the survey design has been modified and is based on the following methods:

a complete enumeration of all enterprises with 50 or more employees (in the private and public sectors), and all enterprises which pertain to industry groups comprising less than ten enterprises,
a stratified random sample of private sector enterprises. Stratification is by industry and employment size. The sampling fraction varies as follows:
- 10 per cent in the size class 5 to 9 employees,
- 20 per cent in the size class 10 to 24 employees, and
- 50 per cent in the size class 25 to 49 employees.

Field work

Data collection

This takes place in January of each year. Data are collected through mailed questionnaires, supplemented by personal interview. Normal field work is usually finished by June. An interviewer's manual is also available for enumerators.

Survey questionnaire

This comprises a set of cards designed to collect information on the enterprise and its employees. Since 1992, employees' characteristics are recorded on Card 2, and include the serial number of the occupational group, the occupation (according to ISCO-88), sex, nationality, educational level and specialization, type of work (regular or temporary), and whether paid or unpaid.

Substitution of sampling units

Not relevant.

Data processing and editing

Survey responses are first checked in the Employment Survey office of the Department of Statistics, where all questionnaires are received and edited. Questionnaires with missing or inconsistent data are returned to the investigators who correct the information and return the questionnaires to the office supervisors. After a new checking, data are coded manually (for variables such as industry, occupation, sex, nationality, education level, etc.) and processed through computer programmes. Final editing and control is carried out manually before tabulations are prepared.

Types of estimates

Employment totals, by category,
Average monthly cash earnings and hours paid for of employees,
Average daily cash earnings of employees,
Total of compensation of employees, for the reference month and the whole year.

Average monthly earnings are obtained by dividing the total amount of gross cash earnings paid to employees during the reference month by the corresponding number of employees. Average daily earnings are obtained by dividing the average monthly earnings per employee by the number of working days during the reference month.

Construction of indices

Index numbers are not constructed.

Weighting of sample results

Not applied.

Adjustments

Non-response

None.

Other bias

None.

Use of benchmark data

Not relevant.

Seasonal variations

Not relevant.

Indicators of reliability of the estimates

Coverage of the sampling frame

Total coverage is aimed at through the annual updating of the records.

Sampling error / sampling variance

Not relevant.

Non-response rate

Not available.

Non-sampling errors

Not available.

Conformity with other sources

Not relevant.

Available series

Published tables include:

distribution of employment by economic activity, size group and sector;
distribution of persons engaged by economic activity, sector, sex, nationality, governorate, category (employees and others), etc.;
paid employees, total cash wages and average monthly wages and total and average hours paid for, according to employees' characteristics, occupational group, size group, sector, etc.;
regular and temporary employees, total and average monthly wages and total and average monthly hours according to various characteristics;
total compensation of employees by component, for the reference month and the whole year.

History of the survey

The survey was introduced in 1967. Prior to 1981, the survey was conducted three times a year, in April, June and October. Since 1981, it is conducted on an annual basis, and data on employment, earnings and hours paid for refer to the month of October. Since 1987, new concepts have been introduced which concern hours of work, working days, closedays, contribution to social security, medical insurance and compensation in kind. In 1992, the Department of Statistics reviewed the survey questionnaire and the survey design, in order to conform to the most up-to-date international definitions and classifications for establishing a wider base of data for planners and those concerned with labour force statistics.

Documentation

Department of Statistics: Employment Survey for establishments engaging five persons or more (annual, Amman). idem: Statistical Year Book (annual, ibid.).

Confidentiality / Reliability criteria

The publication and release of data are subject to confidentiality rules, whereby tables may not reveal any of the particulars of individual establishments.

Other information

Data supplied to the ILO for publication

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

Employment by industry, in Tables 3B and 4. Data cover all persons engaged, by sex.
Average hours paid for per employee per month and by sex, in non-agricultural activities and specific industries, in Tables 11, 12A, 13, 14, and 15.
Average daily earnings of employees, in non-agricultural activities and specific industries, in Tables 16, 17A, 18, 19, and 20.

Data up to 1988 on average occupational earnings are stored in the database containing the statistics on occupational wages and hours of work from the ILO October Inquiry.