Lithuania - 2

Title of the survey

Wages and Salaries by Qualification Group (DA-02).

Organization responsible

Statistics Lithuania, Labour Statistics Division.

Periodicity of the survey

Half-yearly.

Objectives of the survey

To estimate the number of employees and their earnings by qualification group, by economic activity and sector and for the whole economy.

The results are used by various Government institutions, State, private and international organisations, enterprises, researchers and academic users.

Main labour topics covered by the survey

Employment, earnings and hours of work.

Reference period

A full month: April and October.

Coverage of the survey

Geographical

The whole country.

Industrial

All branches of economic activity except agriculture and private households with employed persons.

Establishments

Enterprises, institutions and organisations of all types of ownership and size, except individual unincorporated enterprises (sole proprietorships).

Persons

Full-time, full-month employees.

Occupations

The following qualification groups are used:

Non-manual workers:

managers of enterprises and their deputies
heads of units and chief specialists,
senior specialists and specialists
clerks

Manual workers:

unskilled workers
semi-skilled workers
skilled workers
highly skilled workers

Concepts and definitions

Employment

Employees are permanent residents of the Republic of Lithuania having reached the age of 16 (Law on employment contract, article 4), who are employed on the basis of a direct employment contract, for a fixed or indefinite period of time. They may include young workers between 14 and 16 years of age provided a written agreement has been signed with one of the parents or tutors.

Full-time, full-month employees are persons whose regular working hours are the same as the statutory, collectively agreed or customary hours worked in the enterprise and who have worked the whole of the reference month. According to the law on safety protection at work, normal hours of work cannot exceed 40 hours per week. Included are employees who work under a shortened working schedule provided for by law or collective agreement but who receive the average wage and salary for full-time work.

They include working directors, manual (wage earners) and non-manual employees, commission agents, piece workers, temporary and seasonal workers (provided they have worked the whole of the reference month), and persons temporarily absent from work because of paid vacation or holiday, sickness or accident, provided they received their full wages and salaries for the reference month.

Excluded are part-time workers and workers who have not worked a full month (due to sickness, enrolment or dismissal during the month, or any other reason), apprentices and trainees, home workers, casual workers, unpaid contributing family workers and persons temporarily absent on unpaid vacation or holiday, lay off, industrial dispute, temporary military service, etc.

Data are collected by sex, employee category (manual and non-manual workers) and qualification group.

Earnings

Data are collected on total and average gross monthly earnings, before deduction of employees' compulsory social security contributions (1%) and individual income taxes. They include:

direct wages and salaries for time worked and work done, including premium pay for overtime, shift and night work, etc. incentive pay, production bonuses and other regularly paid bonuses, authors' emoluments for the employees of printed media and publishing houses, television, radio and other organisations; and
payments for time not worked, for vacation, annual leave, time off with pay, etc.;

Basic wages and salaries and premiums, bonuses and fringe benefits are separately identified.

Excluded from gross earnings are cost-of-living allowances, housing, transport, family and similar allowances, irregular bonuses and gratuities and the value of payments in kind, sick leave payments and other payments from social security funds.

Earnings data are collected by sex, employee category (manual and non-manual workers) and qualification group.

Average gross earnings are calculated (by the responding enterprise) by dividing the sum of gross earnings by the corresponding number of employees, by sex, employee category and qualification group.

Wage / salary rates

Not relevant. Minimum monthly and hourly wages and basic salaries are set by the Government in accordance with the Payment Law of the Republic of Lithuania (Art. 2).

Hours of work

Data are collected on hours paid for. They include hours provided by law, collective agreement, labour contract or customary working hours (i.e. normal hours of work); overtime hours; time spent on tasks such as work preparation, time spent at the workplace during which no work is done but for which payments are made in accordance with the employment contract, and short rest periods at the workplace; and hours paid for but not worked in pursuance of law or collective agreements (for vacation, holidays, sickness or accident, professional training and lay off or short-time working).

Time spent on maternity, parental or personal leave, military service, study leave, industrial disputes, weekly rest days, meal breaks, disciplinary suspension, commuting time, etc. is excluded from the concept of hours paid for.

Hours data are collected by sex, employee category (manual and non-manual workers) and qualification group.

International recommendations

The definition of gross earnings is limited to regular cash earnings.

Classifications

Industrial

Data are classified according to the Statistical Classification of economic activities of the European Communities (NACE, Rev. 1), which is itself based on the International Standard Industrial Classification of all economic activities (ISIC), Rev.3.

Occupational

Data are classified by qualification group.

Others

Data are classified by sex, employee category and economic sector.

Sample size and design

Statistical unit

The sampling and reporting unit is the enterprise, institution or organisation, i.e. a legal entity (excluding individual enterprises).

Survey universe / sample frame

The sampling frame is drawn from the Statistical Profile Business Register, which is itself based on the Administrative Business Register. Both registers are updated on a continuous basis. The annual Wages and Salaries Survey (DA-03) is the main source of updating the Administrative Register of public organisations, non-profit organisations and budgetary institutions.

Sample design

Stratified sampling is used. Stratification is by kind of activity and employment size. Size classes are not fixed. In 1999, the survey covered 28,691 units (i.e. 16% of all units in the sampling frame) and 910,006 employees (i.e. 54% of employees).

Field work

Data collection

It is carried out by means of mailed questionnaires which must be returned by the 20th of May for the April survey, and by the 20th of November for the October survey.

Survey questionnaire

It consists of two pages which collect the following data for the reference months:

1. identification of the enterprise;

2. number of non-manual workers; sum of gross earnings, of which (a) sum of basic salaries and (b) sum of premiums, bonuses and fringe benefits; average gross earnings and number of hours paid for, by sex and qualification group;

3. similar data for manual workers.

Instructions are provided along with the questionnaire.

Substitution of sampling units

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

Data processing and editing

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

Types of estimates

Totals, averages and ratios are computed.

Construction of indices

Index numbers are not computed.

Weighting of sample results

The sample data are extrapolated using the Horvitz-Thompson estimator:

where

Y_k: gross earnings fund or number of employees of sample unit k,
P_k: probability for unit k to be included,
n: sample size.

Adjustments

Non-response

In case of total non-response from an existing unit, data are imputed on the basis of the stratum average values of the variables of interest.

Other bias

Adjustments are made to take account of changes in type of activity, changes in the number of employees, merging or splitting of enterprises. In such cases, the real inclusion probabilities are calculated.

Use of benchmark data

Not relevant.

Seasonal variations

The data are not seasonally adjusted.

Indicators of reliability of the estimates

Coverage of the sampling frame

The sampling frame is assumed to cover the total population of enterprises, institutions and organisations, excluding individual proprietorships.

Sampling error / sampling variance

The coefficient of variation is required not to exceed 3%.

The relative standard errors with a 95% confidence interval are calculated for all Horvitz-Thompson estimates (totals and ratios).

Non-response rate

In April 1998, the overall non-response rate was about 8.9%: about 8% on legitimate grounds (bankrupt, liquidation, suspension of economic activity) and the remaining 0.9% were true non-respondents.

Non-sampling errors

The main issue is the problem of possible under- or over-coverage of the sampling frame.

Conformity with other sources

Not relevant.

Available series

Published series include:

Average gross monthly earnings and changes over the previous period,

Average gross hourly earnings,

Average monthly hours paid for, by economic activity, sex, employee category and qualification group, by sector (public and private) and for the whole economy.

History of the survey

Prior to 1994, the survey covered enterprises, institutions and organisations in all economic activities except agricultural, industrial and electricity production enterprises. In 1994, it was extended to all economic activities (excluding individual enterprises) which were covered by complete enumeration. In 1994, it was carried out in April, July and October; in 1995, in January and July and in 1996, April and October. Sampling was introduced in April 1997 and changes were brought to the questionnaire.

Documentation

Statistics Lithuania: Wages and Salaries by Qualification Groups, October 1998 (Ref. B335, March 1999; Vilnius). This publication is issued twice a year. The survey results are released some four to five months after the survey reference period.

idem: Wages and Salaries by Qualification Groups, 1994-1998 (Ref. A331, October 1999; ibid.); contains time series.

See also the information available on the Web-site: http://www.std.lt

Confidentiality / Reliability criteria

Data are not disseminated (a) if they cover three or less enterprises by economic activity or if one of them represents 70% of the number of employees in the stratum, or (b) if the relative standard error is higher than 10%.

Other information

Data supplied to the ILO for publication

The following data are published in the Yearbook of Labour Statistics: Average monthly earnings of employees by economic activity and by sex. (The data for men and women combined, by economic activity, are derived from the Annual Wages and Salaries Survey (DA-03)).

Other sources of data

A survey entitled Survey on earnings by profession on the average earnings by occupation is conducted every five years by the Labour Statistics Division. It provides data on monthly earnings and hours paid for by occupation. The results of this survey (October 1995) are stored in the ILO database.