Netherlands (1)

Title of the survey

Annual Earnings Survey (Jaarlyks loonenderzoek)

Organization responsible

Central Bureau voor de Statistiek (Central Bureau of Statistics - CBS)

Periodicity of the survey

Annual (in October).

Objectives of the survey

To give an overall insight into the employment structure, the level, development and distribution of gross and net wages and the working time of different categories of workers. The results are used very extensively: internally by the CBS and externally by students, researchers, journalists, civil servants, industry managers, etc.

Main labour topics covered by the survey

Employment, earnings and hours of work.

Reference period

Employment: the number of employees on payroll on the 1st of October; Earnings and hours of work: a pay period in October and the whole year.

Coverage of the survey

Geographical

The whole country.

Industrial

All branches of economic activity.

Establishments

All establishments, institutions and other professional bodies from all sectors of activity. Embassies, consulates, international organizations and private households with employees are excluded.

Persons

Employees (wage and salary earners). Excluded from the scope of the survey are working proprietors, home workers, unpaid family workers and workers on military service.

Occupations

Not relevant.

Concepts and definitions

Employment

Wage and salary earners are defined as follows: The survey covers virtually all wage and salary earners on the payroll, including part-time, casual, temporary and seasonal workers, working directors, workers on probation, piece workers, commission agents, workers subcontracted from other companies or firms, persons temporarily absent from work because of paid or unpaid vacation or holiday, temporary or indefinite lay off, industrial dispute as well as apprentices and trainees, provided that they receive a wage or salary. The following categories are separately identified: manual and non-manual workers; casual and temporary workers; full- and part-time workers; young workers aged 16 to 23; and persons temporarily present on payroll during notice period preceding retirement, resignation or dismissal. Full-time workers are defined as those who work full days at an establishment throughout the week, excluding casual workers. Part-time workers are defined as those who, under the terms of the work contract concluded with their employer, do not work full days or do not work at the establishment throughout the week (excluding casual workers). Casual workers are persons with no agreed fixed hours of work and temporary staff. Manual workers are persons directly involved in the production process, including maintenance and transport staff, warehousemen, etc. Non-manual workers are persons like managerial, supervisory, administrative, commercial, sales and nursing staff. In addition, data on employees on the payroll are collected by sex, age, category, seniority, type of employment contract, and shift work (two to five shifts) or regular or irregular hours.

Earnings

Data are collected on: Gross earnings per hour and per month comprise: pay for normal time worked or work done; time rates and merit pay; supplements and bonuses for overtime, shift work or irregular hours; commissions; rent subsidies; payment for time spent travelling (other than commuting time); bonuses and premiums regularly paid at each pay period; remuneration for time not worked such as public holidays, annual leave or short absences; short-time wages and salaries and wages and salaries paid in the event of sickness or accident, provided the gross amount continues to be paid in full. They exclude: employer's contribution to health insurance; holiday bonuses; performance-related payments, incentive pay, profit-sharing or asset-formation payments (when they are paid on an irregular basis); compensation for transport costs, tools, working clothes and use of private car, etc; interest subsidies on amounts borrowed from the employer; advances and back-pay; other incidental or occasional payments; payments and/or supplements paid in the event of sickness, accident or reduced hours of work, unless the employer continues to pay the entire gross wage or salary. Gross annual earnings are the wages from which social security contributions are inferred, plus employers' contributions to pension and voluntary early retirement schemes. In the public sector, gross annual earnings are defined as the wages or salaries before deductions and contributions under the General Old Age Pension Act (AOW), excluding employers' medical insurance contributions. In addition to the regular components of earnings, gross annual earnings comprise a number of irregular payments, such as holiday bonuses, performance-related payments, incentive pay, profit-sharing and other premiums paid irregularly. Corrections are applied for incomplete annual earnings, for example in the case of non-payment due to sickness. Net earnings are gross earnings minus employee contributions to pension, early retirement and social insurance schemes, wage tax and premiums for old-age pension and widows or orphans pensions. Some categories of employees are excluded when calculating average earnings (see below, under Estimates).

Wage/salary rates

Not available.

Hours of work

The survey covers hours paid for per week. They include normal hours of work per week plus any overtime (measured separately). Normal hours of work are those fixed in collective agreements (excluding overtime), or the regular working hours fixed by the internal regulations in the establishment. Hours paid for public holidays, vacation, paid periods of absence due to sickness or accident, occupational injury or illness, maternity leave or parental leave, hours off for personal reasons (births, marriage, family responsibilities), study leave, professional training, and hours devoted to trade unions and employers' organisations activities, are all included. Reduction in hours of work in the form of extra days of leave or vacation days are not included in weekly hours of work, but they are measured separately on an annual basis. Overtime is defined as hours worked in excess of the normal weekly hours of work that were not compensated by extra leave on other days and for which payment is made in full. Hours outside normal working hours but forming part of the contractual working hours are not regarded as overtime. Hours paid for exclude the hours that were worked but were compensated in the form of days off; meal breaks; hours on stand-by duty; some inactive periods of time spent outside the workplace (for lay-off or short-time working, industrial disputes, weekly rest-days, etc.) and time spent travelling to and from work. Out of the total number of hours paid for, data are collected separately on paid and unpaid hours worked during normal periods of work, paid overtime and paid holidays. Data are also collected on standard working days, calculated as: 52 weeks x 5 days = 260. Some categories of employees are excluded when calculating total and average hours of work (see below, under Estimates).

International recommendations

The definition of earnings complies with the international recommendations on cash earnings. Gross earnings for the month of October include all regular payments, while gross annual earnings also comprise irregular and occasional payments. However, both concepts exclude the value of payments in kind. The concept of hours of work used in this survey corresponds to that of hours paid for.

Classifications

Industrial

The survey data are classified according to the Standard Industrial Classification of the Netherlands (SIC) which can be linked to the International Standard Industrial Classification of all economic activities (ISIC), Rev. 2, 1968.

Occupational

Not relevant.

Others

Data are classified according to establishments' employment size, sector (governmental, subsidised or private) and region, employees' characteristics (sex, age group, seniority, type of employment contract) and job variables (manual or non-manual, full- or part-time, stand-by, shift work and working hours).

Sample size and design

Statistical unit

The reporting unit is the establishment which is defined differently for private industry and for government. In private industry, the establishment is a business, which may consist of a number of local establishments and frequently consists of various legal entities. The ultimate unit of observation is the wage or salary earner.

Survey universe / sample frame

This consists of the General Business Register (GBR) of the CBS. The GBR aims at incorporating all social entities in the Netherlands, notably firms and institutions. All legal entities are listed with identifying characteristics such as name, address, employment size, economic activity, etc. The Register records the relations between legal entities and the statistical units.

Sample design

A two-stage sampling method is used. Establishments are first stratified by economic activity and size class and a sample of them is drawn. Establishments are retained in the sample in the subsequent year, except when their size class or their economic activity changes. An additional sample of new establishments in each stratum is selected each year. All establishments employing more than 100 persons are retained with certainty, while between 3 and 50 per cent of the smaller establishments are sampled, depending on the stratum. Each year, around 12,000 firms and institutions are approached, i.e. about 9 per cent of all firms which have one or more employees. The second stage involves the selection of a sample of wage and salary earners within each establishment. Establishments with less than 20 persons must provide the required information for each of their employees, while between 5 and 50 per cent of the employees are surveyed in the case of larger establishments. Establishments receive instructions to arrange all their personnel in alphabetical order and to select the sample by starting with all employees whose family name begins with the letter D and continuing down the alphabet until the requisite number has been reached. The sampling rate is determined on the basis of the variance of the earnings data obtained from the results of the previous surveys. The sample of employees comprises around 320,000 wage and salary earners, i.e. 6.5 percent of all employees.

Field work

Data collection

Data are collected by the staff of the CBS, in October of each year. Questionnaires are sent by mail.

Survey questionnaire

This consists of two parts: The sampled units are requested to return Form A within 14 days, and Form B after the end of the calendar year.

Substitution of sampling units

Sampling units are not replaced in case of total non-response.

Data processing and editing

Data are coded, verified, and processed by computer. Contacts are made by telephone for follow-up and reminder. Some plausibility checks are made by computer.

Types of estimates

The following categories of employees are excluded when calculating hours of work and average earnings: Part-time workers are taken into account in proportion to the number of hours worked. Full-time workers are considered as working the whole year even if they have not done so. Net earnings are obtained from the gross wages to which an individual tax rate group is applied. Thus, the net earnings do not always correspond to the (net) earnings which employees actually receive, as these also depend on specific or private circumstances such as advance income tax relief for mortgage repayments.

Construction of indices

Laspeyres-type composite index numbers are computed.

Weighting of sample results

Data obtained from the sample are extrapolated by applying two coefficients, i.e.: By multiplying the individual values observed by the product of the two coefficients mentioned above, earnings and hours of work can be estimated for the entire population of wage and salary earners. The estimates are computed on the basis of these extrapolations. Thus, to calculate the average weekly earnings of a given category of wage or salary earners, the total weekly earnings (estimate for the entire population) of this category are divided by the number of persons in the category (estimate for the entire population). The average hourly earnings are equal to the sum of weekly earnings divided by the total hours worked.

Adjustments

Non-response

Missing data are dealt with by imputation. No other adjustments are made. The Act on economic statistics makes responding to the Annual Earnings Survey compulsory, stipulating fines for non-respondents.

Other bias

No adjustments are made.

Use of benchmark data

Not relevant.

Seasonal variations

Not relevant.

Indicators of reliability of the estimates

Coverage of the sampling frame

The GBR is virtually complete.

Sampling error / sampling variance

Sampling variance is calculated for the two stages of the stratified sample, with varying sampling fractions.

Non-response rate

About 14 per cent in terms of establishments.

Non-sampling errors

Not available.

Conformity with other sources

The survey results are checked against data from previous surveys, the Quarterly Employment Survey, the Employment Survey, and the Wage Rates Survey.

Available series

Published tables include:

History of the survey

The Annual Earnings Survey started in 1984 and replaced the half-yearly wages surveys, the structural wages survey and the wages survey in agriculture and horticulture. It provides data on earnings and hours of work in October and on an annual basis. From 1947 up to 1961, an Annual Wages Survey covered workers in industry only. It was called a structural wages survey and collected data on individual workers with a view to establishing average wages per hour and per week and the average number of paid working hours for various categories of workers. The period observed was October. In 1961, half-yearly surveys were introduced. Their main objective was to measure wage trends for categories of workers and they covered wages and hours of work of individual workers in April and October. Data on leave, reductions in working hours and holiday allowances, profit benefits, Christmas bonuses, etc. were not taken account while they are now covered in the annual survey. In 1991, the Annual Earnings Survey and the Annual Survey on Employment were merged into a single survey, the Annual Employment and Earnings Survey.

Documentation

Central Bureau voor de Statistiek: Sociaal-economische Maandstatistiek (monthly, Voorburg). idem: Statistical Yearbook of the Netherlands (annual, ibid.).

Confidentiality / Reliability criteria

In compliance with the provisions of the Law of Economic Statistics, data in respect of any particular establishment or employee are not released.

Other information

Data supplied to the ILO for publication

The following series are published in the Yearbook of Labour Statistics: Monthly series of index of hourly wage rates of employees are published in the Bulletin of Labour Statistics.