Poland - 2

Title of the survey

Labour Cost Survey.

Organization responsible

Central Statistical Office.

Periodicity of the survey

Every four years.

Objectives of the survey

To obtain information on labour cost by economic activity, ownership sector, size of enterprises and type of workers (blue and white-collar).

Main labour topics covered by the survey

Employment, hours of work and labour cost; as well as information about establishment practices with regard to the system of payment for time not worked and of social security and pensions schemes.

Reference period

A whole calendar year.

Coverage of the survey

Geographical

The whole country.

Industrial

In 1997 with reference to 1996: the whole national economy, except membership organisations, international organisations and groups as well as households employing workers.

Establishments

Large and medium-size enterprises with more than five employees, in both the public and private sectors.

Persons

All employees with a contract of employment.

Occupations

Data are not collected by individual occupation.

Concepts and definitions

Employment

Employees refer to persons working on contracts of employment.

Excluded are employees working abroad, in intervention or public works, on maternity or rehabilitation leave, apprentices and agents, home workers, as well as persons on unpaid leave. The following employee categories are identified separately:

blue collar employees,
white collar employees,

and under each category:

full-time employees,
part-time employees (converted to full-time units in proportion to the working hours fixed in their employment contract).

The average number of employees is calculated by each enterprise as the total of average employment for each month of the year the enterprise was in operation, divided by 12 (regardless of whether or not the enterprise was in operation throughout the reference year). Average monthly employment is calculated as the arithmetical average of daily employment.

Labour cost

This is defined as the sum of wages and salaries (earnings) and non-wage expenditure borne by an employer during the reference year in order to obtain and maintain a qualified staff.

Labour cost comprises:

A. Wages and other benefits included in the costs of the enterprise:

1. Total of personal wages, of which:

basic wages and salaries and long-service bonuses
periodic premiums for performance within basic tasks
bonuses (excluding profit payments)
payments for overtime
sick pay (when paid from the enterprise assets)
payments for downtime (due to lack of raw material, machinery break-down, weather, etc.)
payments for holidays
other payments for time not worked
anniversary premium pay, gratifications, etc.
retirement pay
other components of personal pay

2. Bonuses and premiums from the enterprise Prize fund

3. Total of non-personal pay,

payments related to individual assignment contracts and
other non-personal pay

4. Total fees

5. Expenditure for training or retraining of personnel

6. Expenditure for business trips

7. Contributions to social insurance and guaranteed Employment Benefit Fund

8. Contributions to the Labour Fund

9. Expenditure related to labour health and safety (related to the purchase of means of individual and group protection, as well as protective clothing and footwear, preventive, regeneration and nutritive food, other nutrition, special pay due to working environment hazardous to health).

10. Benefits from the enterprise social fund (excluding profit share),

11. Other expenditure

B. Payments from profits in enterprises and surplus in co-operatives

12. Premiums and bonuses from profit for distribution and from the surplus in co-operatives

13. Benefits from the establishment's social fund (with profit share)

14. Others

In the case of joint ventures with foreign capital, wages for foreigners paid in currencies are converted to Polish zlotys according to the buying exchange rate of the National Bank of Poland on the day of payment. Equivalents of other benefits or payments in the form of shares are also included, where applicable. Data on wages, salaries and other benefits are expressed gross, i.e. before any deduction for personal income tax, contributions or alimony, etc. Labour cost data are collected by employee category (blue collar and white collar employees).

Hours of work

Data are collected on the following breakdown of hours paid for, by employee category (blue collar and white collar employees):

Normal working hours: working hours within working time of a given group of employees. Apart from normal hours of work, they include hours made up (e.g. for strikes), hours of substitution works or business trips. They exclude paid down-time.
Overtime hours: hours worked in addition to the norm and work paid additionally with no entitlement to days off.
Hours not worked due to holidays.
Hours not worked due to illness.
Hours not worked due to down-time, due to reasons independent from the workers (e.g. for lack of raw material, machinery breakdown, bad weather).
Other hours not worked, for reasons such as occasional leave, leave to take care of a child or a sick person, etc.

International recommendations

The concept of labour cost follows EUROSTAT's recommendations for the European Communities Labour Cost Survey. It is also in line with the international recommendations. The breakdown of hours paid for, as used in this survey, permits the computation of hours actually worked, in line with the international recommendations.

Classifications

By detailed group of components (see under Concepts and definitions).

Industrial

According to the Polish version (EKD) of 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, 1990.

Occupational

Not relevant.

Others

Labour cost statistics are classified by size of enterprises (large and medium), sector (public and private) and employee category. In mining and quarrying and in manufacturing, large units are those with more than 50 employees; in the rest of the economy, they are those with more than 20 employees.

Sample size and design

Statistical unit

The sampling and reporting unit is the enterprise.

Survey universe / sample frame

This consists of the Register of economic units (REGON), which covers establishments and enterprises with more than five employees. The Register is updated every month. In 1996, it covered some 165,419 units.

Sample design

In 1996, stratified sampling with probability proportional to size was used. The sample frame was stratified by economic activity and sector, constituting 146 population groups. Within each population group, all largest units N0 were considered as one stratum and included with certainty in the sample. The remaining units were divided into L strata, where

L = entier ((N-N0)/K) + 1

and

K = 2 * entier ((N - N0)/(n - N0) + 0.5)

N: the number of units in the population

n: the pre-determined size of the sample in the given population

and sampling units were selected randomly within each stratum.

In small population groups (with less than 100 units), all units were included in the sample. There were 50 such population groups.

The whole sample comprised some 32,539 units, which represented 20% of the universe.

Field work

Data collection

The survey is conducted by postal questionnaires which are sent by, and returned to the regional statistical offices in Spring. The questionnaires should be returned not later than 18th April of a given year, and refer to the previous calendar year.

Survey questionnaire

This contains four sections:

Information about the enterprise (number of months of operation, total number of persons employed on 31st December of the reference year)
Employment: average number of employees by category and type of contract (full and part-time);
Hours of work: hours paid for and their breakdown;
Labour cost components.

Definitions of terms used and details on inclusions and exclusions are provided with the questionnaire.

Substitution of sampling units

Not applied.

Data processing and editing

Data are verified by the regional statistical offices, and then entered onto a mainframe computer. In the case of non-responding units, missing or inconsistent data, the sampled units are contacted by telephone, mail and personal visit of field enumerators. Range and consistency checks cover all phases of the survey.

Types of estimates

Total and averages. Labour cost estimates are computed as averages per employee and per month, per hour paid for and per hour worked. Structure of labour cost.

Part-time workers are converted to full-time equivalents. Missing data are dealt with by imputation.

Construction of indices

Not relevant.

Weighting of sample results

The generalisation of the sample results to the whole population is as follows:

where

X_0i: value of the variable X in the unit belonging to the stratum number 0,
X_1h: value of the variable X in the first unit selected from the h-th stratum,
X_2h: value of the variable X in the second unit selected from the h-th stratum,
M: the inflation factor, the inverse of the sampling fraction i.e. M=K/2,
h: 1, 2, ... L.

Adjustments

Non-response

In cases of non-responses, the factor M was corrected according to the following formula:

where

P: number of the employed in the given population according to the sampling frame,
P': the number of the employed in the given population according to the sampling frame, estimated on the surveyed part of the sample.

Other bias

No adjustments are made for any other bias.

Use of benchmark data

Not relevant.

Coverage of the sampling frame

The Register REGON covers, in principle, all establishments and is updated on a continuous basis.

Sampling error / sampling variance

The latest available standard errors were for 1993:

1.3% for personal wages in the total surveyed population (manufacturing and construction);

2.1% for average labour cost per hour worked in the total surveyed population in the public sector (manufacturing and construction);

1.9% for average labour cost per hour worked in division 15 (manufacturing of food products and beverages) in the public sector.

Non-response rate

32,539 enterprises were listed in the 1996 survey; but after elimination of units in liquidation, the sample amounted to 30,891 units, out of which 8,191 units did not respond, i.e. about 26% in terms of units.

Non-sampling errors

Errors may result from incomplete questionnaires or mistakes made in tabulating the final data.

Conformity with other sources

Data from the survey are checked with results from the Reports on employment, earnings and hours of work.

Estimates for non-survey years

Estimates have been computed as from 1998, on the basis of existing wage data and other sources.

Available series

The following tables were published for the 1996 Labour Cost survey:

Structure of surveyed units (in percentage) by class of economic activity, ownership sector, and size type,
Employment structure by class of economic activity, employment size group and ownership sector,
Structure of hours paid for (in percentage),
Basic information on labour cost by types of enterprise,
Average monthly labour cost by employee and by employee category, cross- classified by economic activity, employment size and sector,
Average labour cost per hour paid for and average labour cost per hour worked, by economic activity, employment size and sector,
Structure of labour cost by components, activity and sector,
Selected labour cost components by type of activity and sector,
Average gross monthly wages and structure of monthly wages by type of activity and sector.

History of the survey

The first Labour Cost survey started in 1994, with reference to 1993. It covered only manufacturing and construction.

In 1995 and in 1996, it covered respectively:

With reference to 1994: mining and quarrying, electricity, gas and water supply, trade and repair, hotels and restaurants, real estate and business activities (without research and development), and other community, social and personal service activities;
With reference to 1995: financial intermediation; research and development, public administration; education; health and social work.

In 1997 (with reference to 1996), the survey was extended to the whole economy excluding membership organisations, international organisations and groups as well as households employing workers. The periodicity has now changed from annually to four-yearly.

Documentation

Central Statistical Office: Labour Costs (Warsaw, 1997). This publication contains some methodological information.

Web-site address: http://www.stat.gov.pl

Confidentiality / Reliability criteria

Data with respect to a single establishment or enterprise cannot be released.

Other information

Data supplied to the ILO for publication

Statistics of average monthly labour cost per employee in manufacturing are published in the Yearbook of Labour Statistics.