Lithuania - 3

Title of the survey

Wages and Salaries Survey (DA-03).

Organization responsible

Statistics Lithuania, Labour Statistics Division.

Periodicity of the survey

Annual.

Objectives of the survey

To estimate the earnings of all employees who have direct employment contracts (also known as hired employees).

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

The whole year.

Coverage of the survey

Geographical

The whole country.

Industrial

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

Establishments

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

Persons

All employees, out of which employees with direct employment contracts (hired employees).

Occupations

The survey does not collect data by individual occupation.

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.

A direct employment contract is an agreement with an employer, according to which the employee commits himself (herself) to perform work in conformity with his/her profession, speciality and qualifications or hold a certain position while complying with the regular labour orders, whereas the employer commits himself (herself) to pay the employee his/her wage and salary and ensure working conditions provided for by labour laws, collective agreements and other juridical statements on the basis of bilateral agreement.

Employees include working directors, manual (wage earners) and non-manual employees, piece workers, commission agents, casual, temporary and seasonal workers, part-time workers, and persons temporarily absent from work because of paid or unpaid vacation or holiday, lay off, industrial dispute, sickness or accident.

Excluded are apprentices and trainees, home workers, unpaid contributing family workers and persons on temporary military service, women on maternity and extended child-care leave (until the child is 3 years old), and employees who have an indirect employment contract (until 1 July 1997), authorial and other civil law contracts.

Data are collected separately on full- and part-time employees and on the number of full-time equivalent units.

Full-time employees are persons employed on the basis of a direct employment contract, whose regular working hours are the same as the statutory, collectively agreed or customary hours worked in the enterprise. 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.

Part-time employees are those whose regular working hours are lower than those provided for by law or collective agreement.

Employees who do not work a full working day (part-time employees) and employees who do not work a full month are converted to full-time equivalent units (by the responding enterprises) according the following two methods:

in enterprises where usual working time accounting is applied: the sum of all hours paid for of such employees during a month is divided by the number of daily normal hours of work in the enterprise, thus providing the conventional number of work days; the latter is then divided by the number of work days of the reporting period;
in enterprises where the total working time accounting is applied: the sum of all hours paid for of such employees during a month is divided by the number of monthly normal hours of work in the enterprise.

The average annual number of hired employees is calculated (by the responding enterprises) according to the following two methods:

in enterprises with low labour turnover: it corresponds to the sum of the number of employees on the last day of each of the first 11 months of the year, plus half of the number of employees as of 31 December of the previous year and half of the number of employees as of 31 December of the current year, divided by 12;
in enterprises with high labour turnover: it corresponds to the sum of the number of employees on each calendar day, divided by the annual number of calendar days.

Earnings

Data are collected on total gross annual earnings of employees with direct employment contracts. 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;
payments for time not worked, for vacation, annual leave, time off with pay, etc.;
irregular bonuses and gratuities, such as seasonal, year-end and similar bonuses and profit-sharing bonuses;
severance pay and compensation.

Severance pay and compensation, regular and irregular premiums, out of which premiums from profit, are separately identified.

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

Total net annual earnings are computed after deduction of employees' individual income taxes and social security contributions (1%) from total gross earnings.

Average gross and net earnings are calculated separately for full-time and part-time employees and for the number of full-time equivalent units.

Average monthly and hourly earnings refer exclusively to hired employees, excluding payments to persons who work under an indirect employment contract, authorial and other civil law contracts, severance payments and compensations, and earnings of managing directors and members of the managing board of enterprises.

Wage / salary rates

Not relevant. Minimum monthly and hourly wage rates and basic salaries are set by the Government under the Payment Law of the Republic of Lithuania (Art. 2).

Hours of work

Data are collected on normal hours of work, hours actually worked and hours paid for.

Normal hours of work are those fixed by in pursuance of laws or collective agreements, per day, week or month. Time worked in addition to normal hours of work is generally paid at higher rates of pay.

Hours actually worked 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.

Hours paid for include hours actually worked and hours paid for but not worked in pursuance of law or collective agreements (for paid annual leave, paid sick leave and other days paid for but not worked, such as for personal leave, civil responsibilities, professional training, first two days of sick leave and lay off or short-time working).

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

International recommendations

The definitions of total gross annual earnings and hours actually worked conform to the international recommendations, with slight modifications (e.g. total earnings are limited to cash payments).

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

Not relevant.

Others

Data are classified by employee group (full- and part-time), type of ownership and size of enterprises (1 to 9 employees; 10 to 9, 20-49 and 10-49; 50-99, 100-199 and 50-199; 200 and more and 200-499, 500-999, 1,000 and more employees), region and sector.

Sample size and design

Statistical unit

The 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.

Sample design

The survey is conducted by complete enumeration of enterprises, institutions and organisations which complete statistical reports and income declarations. These enterprises enrol some 90% of all paid employees. (See also under Other sources of data:.)

Field work

Data collection

It is carried out by means of mailed questionnaires which must be returned by the 10th of February of the year following the reference year.

Survey questionnaire

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

1. Identification of the enterprise;

2. Number of employees during the reference year:

average number of employees, of which
- part-time employees
average number of employees paid from the State budget and local administration budgets
average number of paid employees converted into full-time units
number of hours paid for, out of which
- number of hours actually worked
part of capital belonging to the State, in percentage
fixed duration of the working week (normal hours of work), separately for weeks with 5 and 6 work days), or
average fixed duration of the work month in hours;

3. Earnings of employees with direct employment contracts:

sum of gross earnings for all employees converted into full-time units, out of which:
- for employees working with employment contracts
- severance pay and compensation
- regular and irregular premiums, of which
  - premiums from profit
sum of gross earnings for part-time employees
sum of gross earnings for employees paid from State and local administration budgets
sum of gross social allowances paid directly by the employer.

Additional information is collected on the average annual number of managing directors and members of the managing boards and their gross earnings.

Detailed instructions are provided along with the questionnaire.

Substitution of sampling units

In case of total 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 and averages (number of employees and earnings) and ratios of change.

Average monthly earnings are calculated by dividing the annual total earnings by the average number of employees and by 12.

Average hourly earnings are calculated by dividing the annual total earnings by the total number of paid hours per year.

Average hours actually worked (or paid for) per week are calculated by dividing the annual total number of hours actually worked (or paid for) of all employees by the number of employees; the result is then divided by 12, and by 4.35.

Construction of indices

Index numbers of nominal gross and net earnings and real net earnings are computed on various bases (previous year, 1990, 1993 = 100) (without fixed weights).

Weighting of sample results

Not relevant.

Adjustments

Non-response

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

Other bias

None.

Use of benchmark data

Not relevant.

Seasonal variations

Not relevant.

Indicators of reliability of the estimates

Coverage of the sampling frame

The Statistical Register covers about 90% of all paid employees. The remaining employees work in enterprises not observed in terms of statistics. They include employees covered through additional information resources (see under Other sources of data), employees in non-responding enterprises, and employees hired illegally.

Sampling error / sampling variance

Not relevant.

Non-response rate

About 15%.

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

The main series include:

Number of hired employees, in absolute figures and percentages,

Number of full-time and part-time employees,

Changes over the previous period,

Distribution of hired employees by duration of the working week,

Structure of gross remuneration (earnings and additional components),

Average gross and net monthly earnings and indices,

Average monthly compulsory deductions from gross earnings, cross-classified by economic activity, sector, region, and for the whole economy.

History of the survey

The NACE Rev.1 was introduced in 1993 (with reference to 1992). Since 1995, data are collected on both hours actually worked and hours paid for.

Documentation

Statistics Lithuania: Wages and Salaries, 1998 (Ref. A330, September 1999), (annual, Vilnius); the survey results are released some seven months after the survey period.

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

Confidentiality / Reliability criteria

Data are not disseminated if they cover three or less enterprises by economic activity or if one of them represents 70% of the number of employees.

Other information

Data supplied to the ILO for publication

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

Paid employment (number of Employees) by economic activity,

Average monthly earnings of employees by economic activity (men and women combined only; the data by sex are derived from the half-yearly survey of Wages and Salaries by Qualification Group (DA-02)),

Average monthly earnings of employees in manufacturing, by industry group, since 1997. (Data for the previous years were derived from the Annual Industrial Activity Survey of Enterprises (P-01); see below, under Other sources of data.)

Other sources of data

(I) In order to compile employment and earnings statistics for the whole economy, the results of the Annual Wages and Salaries Survey (DA-03) are complemented with data obtained from the payrolls of sole proprietorships which provide declarations to the Tax Authorities. Estimates of the number of employees working illegally and of their average earnings are computed separately for the purposes of national accounts.

(II) The Division of Industry Statistics of Statistics Lithuania conducts an annual Industrial Activity Survey of Enterprises (P-01) which also produces statistics on the number of employees, average hours of work and earnings in industry. The results of this survey are published in the Statistical Yearbook of Lithuania.

They are also published in the following Tables of the ILO Yearbook of Labour Statistics:

Number of employees in manufacturing, by industry group,

Average weekly hours actually worked in manufacturing, and

Average monthly earnings of employees in manufacturing until 1996. (Since 1997, the statistics of average monthly earnings in manufacturing are derived from the annual Wages and Salaries Survey (DA-03).)

(III) The Labour Statistics Division of Statistics Lithuania also conducts another annual survey in October of each year, entitled Distribution of Employees by Groups of Gross Earnings (DA-05).

Coverage: Its coverage, in terms of industries, enterprises and employees, is the same as that of the annual survey DA-03.

Concepts and definitions: Earnings are limited to regular cash earnings (as in the half- yearly Survey DA-02). Hours of work are not covered.

Data are collected on the distribution of full- and part-time employees by levels of earnings (20 ranges) during the month of October.

In addition data are collected on:

the total amount of gross earnings for full-time employees who worked during the reference month, of which:
for employees in the lowest range,
for employees in the highest range,
the average monthly earnings of full-time employees, and separately,
for employees in the lowest range,
for employees in the highest range.
the total number of full- and part-time employees at the end of October.

Survey method: The survey is conducted by stratified random sampling. Stratification is by economic activity and employment size. In 1998, the sampling frame drawn for this survey consisted of 26,796 reporting units (enterprises, institutions and organisations, excluding sole proprietorships), and some 1,050,503 employees. A sample of 5,472 units representing 634,372 employees (respectively, 19.5% and 60.4%) was drawn from this sampling frame.

Data collection, estimation methods, weighting of the sample and classification of the resulting statistics are similar to those adopted for the other surveys.

History: This survey was first conducted in October 1994, on a complete enumeration basis. Sampling was introduced in October 1996.

Available series: The survey results include:

Distribution of employees by levels of earnings, in absolute figures and percentages,

Distribution of part-time employees by levels of earnings, in absolute figures and percentages, by economic activity, sector and for the whole economy.

Main publication: Statistics Lithuania: Distribution of Employees by Groups of Gross Earnings in October (annual, Vilnius). The normal time-lag between the reference period of data collection and the release of results is about four months.