Japan (2)

Title of the survey

General Survey on Wages and Working Hours System

Organization responsible

Ministry of Labour, Policy Planning and Research Department

Periodicity of the survey

Annual, but data on labour cost are collected every three years.

Objectives of the survey

To study general basic items relating to enterprises: wages and working hours systems, labour cost, welfare facility systems, retirement entitlements and payments systems in major industries, and to obtain basic data on labour conditions in Japan. The survey is mainly used to compare the labour management systems of enterprises.

Main labour topics covered by the survey

Earnings, hours of work, compensation of employees, labour cost, establishment practices with regard to systems of payment for time not worked, social security and pension schemes, payroll taxes, etc.

Reference period

Employment: 31 December of each year; Labour cost: the whole year; Hours of work: the month of november.

Coverage of the survey

Geographical

The whole country, except some distant islands.

Industrial

All branches of economic activity, except agriculture, hunting, forestry and fishing, private households with employed persons and Government services.

Establishments

Private enterprises with 30 or more regular employees.

Persons

Regular employees. Working proprietors, self-employed persons and unpaid family workers are excluded.

Occupations

All occupations, but data are not collected separately by occupation.

Concepts and definitions

Employment

Regular employees are employees who are employed for an unlimited period of employment. For the purposes of data collection on labour cost, part-time employees and seamen are included among regular employees; however, these categories of workers are excluded from the data collection on working hours. Part-time workers are either workers whose daily scheduled working hours are shorter than those of regular employees, or workers whose daily scheduled working hours are the same as those of regular employees but whose weekly scheduled working days are shorter than those of regular employees. The following categories of workers are included as regular employees, but not separately identified: working directors who a paid a salary, wage earners and salaried employees, apprentices, persons temporarily absent from work because of paid or unpaid vacation or holiday, industrial dispute, sickness or accident, as well as persons temporarily present on payroll during notice period preceding retirement, resignation or dismissal. Excluded are trainees and employees on probation, piece workers, commission agents, home workers, casual, temporary and seasonal workers, employees sub-contracted from other companies or firms, employees from temporary work agencies, and persons absent from work because of temporary or indefinite lay off or temporary military service.

Labour cost

all the necessary costs incurred by employers as a result of hiring workers. It comprises the following components:

cash payroll: the total amount of scheduled earnings (basic wage, various kinds of allowances ), good attendance allowances, bonuses, etc.;
non-cash paid expenses: total expenses or allowances for goods such as the provision of commuting tickets or railway coupon tickets, the provision of own products, etc.;
cost of severance pay: the total amount of lump sum separation allowances (including dismissal allowances), contributions to the Smaller Enterprise Retirement Allowance Mutual Aid System, and the cost of retirement annuities (contributions for qualified pensions and additional contributions to adjust pensions, etc.);
legal welfare expenses: employer's contributions to health insurance, welfare pensions, labour insurance and seamen's insurance, children's allowances, coal mining pensions, employment benefits for the handicapped and obligatory compensation costs;
cost of non-legal welfare: total amount of the cost of company housing, canteens and other food services, medical and health services, cultural, sporting and recreational facilities, solatium for congratulations and condolences, barber shops and hair-dressing salons, purchasing facilities, etc., which are based on the employer's original policies about physical facilities, including the cost of repayment, maintenance and personal expenses (wage and allowances for workers who belong exclusively to the facilities) and excluding the cost of interest for loans to establish the facilities;
cost of education and vocational training: total amount of the cost of facilities for workers' education and vocational training (excluding schools which aim at enriching general culture), allowances and rewards for trainers, and the cost of commission training;
cost of recruitment: total amount of the cost of advertising for recruits, entrance examinations, allowances for leaving for new post, personal costs for workers who newly engaged;
other labour costs: cost of working uniforms (excluding those which are for special activities such as safety uniforms, guards' uniforms), transfers to other offices, house magazines, rewards, etc., not elsewhere classified.

Labour cost data cover regular employees, including part-time employees and seamen.

Hours of work

Data are collected on scheduled working hours, i.e. hours actually worked, excluding rest periods, between starting and terminating hours of employment as laid down by labour contracts, work regulations or collective agreements. Included in scheduled working hours, but not separately identified, are:

time spent at the place of work during which no work is done but for which payment is made under a guaranteed employment contract;
periods of time spent at the place of work for the preparation of the workplace, repairs, maintenance, preparation and cleaning of tools, the preparation of receipts, time sheets and reports;
inactive periods of time spent at the workplace while workers are waiting or standing by due to mechanical or electrical breakdown, lack of supply of materials or clients, bad weather, etc.;
study and training periods while at the workplace;
inactive periods at the workplace due to work stoppage because of industrial disputes;
time spent at the workplace on trade unions and employers' organizations activities.

Excluded from scheduled working hours are:

paid and unpaid overtime;
time corresponding to short rest periods, including tea or coffee breaks and meal breaks;
all inactive periods of time spent outside the workplace, for reasons such as holidays or vacation, sickness or accident, weekly rest days, occupational injury or illness, any type of leave, layoff or short-time working, time spent on travel from home to work and vice versa, and special refreshment leave.

Data on scheduled working hours are collected for regular full-time employees. Part-time employees and seamen are excluded. Data are also collected separately on the total number of annual holidays, including weekly holidays, national holidays, year-end and beginning holidays, special holidays for summer vacation, corporate founding day and other holidays designated as days off by collective agreements, work regulations or custom, as well as on days of absence for any other reasons (sickness or accident, occupational injury or illness, refreshment leave, etc.). Standard annual working days are computed by subtracting the total number of annual holidays from the number of days of the year.

International recommendations

The definition of labour cost conforms with the international guidelines on labour cost with the following main exceptions: remuneration for time not worked and elements such as taxes regarded as labour cost are excluded. The concept of scheduled working hours corresponds to that of normal hours of work as defined in the international recommendations, with the following exceptions: time corresponding to short rest periods, such as tea or coffee breaks, and normal hours not actually worked are excluded.

Classifications

Components of labour cost / compensation of employees

Data are classified according to the following eight groups (the correspondence with the major groups of the International Standard Classification of Labour Cost (ISCLC-1966) is indicated between brackets):

annual cash payroll (which includes direct wages and salaries and bonuses and gratuities);
food, drink, fuel and other payments in kind (which correspond to payments in kind);
cost of retirement and severance pay (which corresponds to part of employers' social security expenditure);
legal welfare expenses (which correspond to part of employers' social security expenditure);
non-legal welfare expenses (which correspond to parts of the cost of workers' housing borne by employers, employers' social security expenditure and the cost of welfare services);
education and vocational training cost (which corresponds to the cost of vocational training);
recruitment costs (which are part of labour cost not elsewhere classified);
other labour cost (which corresponds to the remainder of labour cost not elsewhere classified).

This classification can be linked to ISCLC-1966.

Industrial

The Japan Standard Industrial Classification (JSIC) is used, which distinguishes nine major groups. The JSIC is linked to the International Standard Industrial Classification of all economic activities (ISIC), Rev.2, 1968 with a few exceptions (for example hotels are classified under community, social and personal services in the JSIC).

Occupational

Not relevant.

Others

Data on labour cost and hours of work are classified by size of enterprise; four size groups are used: 30 to 99, 100 to 299, 300 to 999 and 1000 and more regular employees.

Sample size and design

Statistical unit

The sampling unit is the privately owned enterprise, i.e. an incorporated enterprise engaged in the production of goods and/or the provision of services.

Survey universe / sample frame

The 1986 Establishment Census, conducted by the Statistics Bureau, Management and Coordination Agency. The sampling frame is updated every five years after each Establishment Census.

Sample design

The survey is based on a stratified one-stage sampling method. Enterprises are stratified by industry group and size. All enterprises with 5,000 or more regular employees are included with certainty. In the other strata, the sampling fraction ranges from 1/2 to 1/151. The total sample size exceeds 6,000 units. The sample is updated every five years after each Establishment Census.

Field work

Data collection

Questionnaires are distributed and collected by staff and enumerators from Prefectural Labour Standards Offices and Labour Standards Inspection Offices in each Prefecture; occasionally, temporary investigators may also be recruited.

Survey questionnaire

It is designed to collect data and information on the following items:

characteristics of enterprises (name, address, name of main product manufactured or principal activity, total number of regular employees and presence or absence of labour union),
working hours (scheduled working hours per day or week, system of weekly days off, number of days off per year, number of paid holidays per year, variable working hours system, judged working hours system and continual vacation),
wages system (wage type, amendment situation of wage system and of initial wages),
wages system of workers of overseas service (wages system and labour cost),
labour cost (all items mentioned above),
cost of dispatched workers.

Substitution of sampling units

Sampling units which have gone out of business, changed address, refused to respond, etc., are not replaced. They are considered as impossible cases.

Data processing and editing

Data are processed by computer. They are coded manually and edited by machine. In the case of missing or inconsistent data, etc. enumerators contact the responding unit by telephone or personal visit.

Types of estimates

average normal hours of work per week per employee,
annual labour cost for all employees,
annual average labour cost per employee,
monthly average labour cost per employee (obtained by dividing the annual cost by the number of months),
distribution of labour cost by component.

Construction of indices

Not relevant.

Weighting of sample results

Aggregate data are obtained by multiplying the values of the sample by the reciprocal of the sampling fractions.

Adjustments

Non-response

None.

Other bias

None.

Use of benchmark data

Not relevant.

Use of other surveys

Not relevant.

Indicators of reliability of the estimates

Coverage of the sampling frame

Not available.

Sampling error / sampling variance

Not available.

Non-response rate

Not available.

Non-sampling errors

Not available.

Conformity with other sources

Not available.

Estimates for non-survey years

Not relevant.

Available series

Not available.

History of the survey

The General Survey on Wages and Working Hours System has been carried out since 1984. It combines the Wage System Survey, the Wage Composition Survey, the Working Hours System Survey, and the Survey of Welfare Facilities System for Employees, which were conducted separately from the General Survey on Wages and Working Hours System since October 1966. Statistics of labour cost were compiled through the Survey on Labour Cost from 1965 to 1971, then through the Survey on Welfare Facilities System for Employees, from 1972 to 1983. In the present survey, labour cost is covered every three years.

Documentation

Ministry of Labour, Policy Planning and Research Department: Report of General Survey on Wages and Working Hours System (annual, (Tokyo). The results are published about a year after the survey reference period. Additional data which do not appear in publications can be made available upon request and all data are available on magnetic tape.

Confidentiality / Reliability criteria

Under Article 14 of the Statistics Law, confidential data of individual corporations or other organizations which are covered by a survey approved by the Director-General of the Management and Coordination Agency, cannot be released or published.

Other information

Data supplied to the ILO for publication

Statistics of average monthly labour cost per employee in manufacturing as a whole and by major group are published in Tables 22 A and 22 B of the Yearbook of Labour Statistics.