Portugal (2)

Title of the survey

Enquête sur le coût de la main-d'oeuvre (Labour Cost Survey)

Organization responsible

The Statistics Department of the Ministère de l'Emploi et de la Sécurité Sociale (MESS) is responsible for organizing and conducting the survey. The results are published under the responsibility of the MESS scientific and technical information department.

Periodicity of the survey

Four-yearly.

Objectives of the survey

To obtain information on the level and percentages composition of labour cost.

Main labour topics covered by the survey

Employment, hours of work and labour cost.

Reference period

Employment: average employment in the last week of each month of the reference year. Hours of work and labour cost: the calendar year.

Coverage of the survey

Geographical

Whole country.

Industrial

All economic activities except: agriculture, hunting, forestry and fishing; public administration; armed forces; international organizations; business services, community services and domestic service.

Establishments

Industrial establishments with ten employees or more and enterprises in the wholesale and retail trade, restaurants and hotels, and financing and insurance.

Persons

All employees (wage earners and salaried employees separately) over the age of 14 years. Home workers are excluded from the survey.

Occupations

Not relevant.

Concepts and definitions

Employment

The survey makes a distinction between the following categories of employees, by sex:

Wage earners: manual employees bound to the enterprise by a contract of employment. Excluded from this category are: foremen, supervisors, clerks of works and site overseers.
Salaried employees: non-manual employees bound to the enterprise by a contract of employment and not included among wage earners, i.e. foremen and supervisors, office workers, clerks of works, middle and senior managers, senior technicians, commercial workers, etc.
Apprentices: workers acquiring technical vocational skills under the guidance of qualified workers.

A distinction is made between full-time and part-time employees:

Full-time employees are those who work the normal hours in force in the establishment for the occupational category concerned;
Part-time employees are those who work less than normal hours of work.

Included are trainees, workers on probation, casual, temporary and seasonal workers, if they are employed for more than six months during the reference period; piece workers; commission agents; workers on leave (paid or unpaid), workers absent because of industrial dispute, and workers absent because of illness or employment injury. Excluded are workers on military service; home workers and unpaid family workers; persons temporarily present on the payroll during the period of notice preceding retirement, resignation or dismissal.

Labour cost

This is defined as the cost incurred by the employer in the employment of labour. It comprises remuneration for work performed, payments in respect of time paid for but not worked, bonuses and gratuities, the cost of benefits in kind, the cost of workers' housing borne by the employer, the employer's social security expenditure, cost of vocational training, cost of social services and miscellaneous items such as transport of workers, work clothes and recruitment, together with taxes regarded as labour cost. The data on remuneration and employers' social security contributions are collected separately for wage earners, salaried employees and apprentices.

Hours of work

Two concepts are used:

normal hours of work as established by collective agreements, arbitral awards or the establishments' internal regulations, in the case of salaried employees;
hours actually worked, including overtime and hours spent on vocational training, in the case of wage earners.

Excluded are hours paid for but not actually worked, such as paid annual vacations, paid holidays, paid sick leave; time off in compensation for overtime; inactive periods at the workplace because of bad weather; work stoppages because of industrial disputes; time spent on trade union activities; meal breaks; time spent on travel from home to work and vice versa.

International recommendations

The definition of labour cost conforms with that used in the international recommendations. The two concepts of hours of work contained in the international recommendations are used in the labour cost survey:

normal hours of work;
hours actually worked, very closely in line with the international definition.

Classifications

Components of labour cost / compensation of employees

The data on labour cost are classified by groups of components:

direct wages and salaries;
remuneration for hours paid for but not worked;
irregular bonuses and gratuities;
food, drink, fuel, housing, and other payments in kind;
employers' statutory social security expenditure;
employers' collectively agreed, contractual and non-obligatory social security costs;
cost of vocational training;
cost of welfare services;
labour costs not classified elsewhere.

This classification corresponds to the International Standard Classification of Labour Cost (1966).

Industrial

The data are classified in accordance with the Classificaçao das Actividades Económicas Portuguesas por Ramos de Actividades, 1973, which is compatible with the International Standard Industrial Classification of All Economic Activities (ISIC), Rev.2, 1968.

Occupational

Not relevant.

Others

size of establishment (10 to 19, 20 to 49, 50 to 99, 100 to 199, 200 to 499, 500 to 999, 1000 employees or more);
category (wage earners or salaried employees) and sex (employment only);
region (seven regions).

Sample size and design

Statistical unit

The sampling unit is the establishment in the case of mining and quarrying and manufacturing, and the enterprise for electricity, gas and water; construction; wholesale and retail trade; restaurants and hotels; transport, storage and communication, and financing and insurance.

Survey universe / sample frame

The survey universe comprises the administrative records Quadros de Pessoal which covers all public and private sector enterprises and co-operatives as well as all persons or bodies employing workers covered by a social security scheme or by collective labour regulations. The source is updated every year. In 1988, the file comprised about 140,000 enterprises and 167,000 establishments, employing 2,150,000 workers.

Sample design

The sample is selected using the Neyman optimum allocation simultaneously with allocation proportional to the square root of total employment. The universe is stratified by economic activity, size of unit and region in the case of industry, and by economic activity and size of unit in the case of the services. The selected sample comprises about 9,500 units. Units with 100 workers and over are selected with certainty. The sampling fractions are as follows:

10-19 employees: 19 per cent;
20-49 employees: 38 per cent;
50-99 employees: 68 per cent;
100 employees or more: 100 per cent.

Field work

Data collection

The survey is conducted by mailed questionnaire, sent to the sample establishments and enterprises, which supply the data. The persons responsible for computerized data analysis and acquisition are recruited temporarily for each survey (i.e. every four years).

Survey questionnaire

The questionnaire collects the following information:

workers bound to the enterprise by a contract of employment during the reference year:
- number (during the last week of each month of the year) of full-time wage earners and salaried employees, by sex;
- monthly average number of part-time salaried employees and wage earners, by sex, together with the corresponding total number of hours actually worked;
- annual number (or monthly average number) of apprentices;
hours of work (relating to full-time employees);
expenditure on wages and salaries and employers' social security contributions (for full-time and part-time employees).

Instructions concerning definitions, inclusions and exclusions as well as methods of calculation are provided on the back of the questionnaire.

Substitution of sampling units

In the event of closure or change of address, the sampling unit is replaced by another unit in the same stratum.

Data processing and editing

The data are processed by computer. They are then edited manually and by computer. The establishment or enterprises is contacted by telephone is the event of gaps or inconsistencies in the data.

Types of estimates

composition of labour cost;
average labour cost per worker, per hour and month;

The number of part-time workers is converted to full-time equivalents.

Construction of indices

Not relevant.

Weighting of sample results

The results are weighted as follows: for each stratum n = (ijk):

i: activity;
j: unit category;
k: region;
NP_ijk: number of employees in stratum (i,j,k) of the universe;
np_ijk: number of workers in the sample (ijk);
x_ijk: value of variable x in the surveyed unit 1;
X_ijk: estimated value of variable x.

Adjustments

Non-response

By virtue of the Act Dec. 28/73 of 25 August, Art. 86, No. 1 a, participation in this survey is compulsory. Missing data are imputed on the basis of replies from similar statistical units.

Other bias

Not relevant.

Use of benchmark data

Not relevant.

Use of other surveys

Not relevant.

Indicators of reliability of the estimates

Coverage of the sampling frame

The administrative records cover all enterprises and establishments covered by the survey.

Sampling error / sampling variance

The sampling variance is calculated as follows:

where

i: index of establishment in the sample;
n: number of establishments in the sample;
P_i: factor allowing extrapolation of the population;
X_i: total expenditures of establishment i;
Y_i: total hours worked in establishment i.

Non-response rate

About 32 per cent in terms of numbers of units and 30 per cent in terms of jobs.

Non-sampling errors

Not available.

Conformity with other sources

Not available.

Estimates for non-survey years

Average costs are updated for the years between two surveys, on the basis of average earnings as indicated in the half-yearly earnings survey. The following formula is used: Updated cost for 1989 = s89/s88 X w (1 + K89) where s89 = average hourly earnings in 1989; s88 = average hourly earnings in 1988; w88 = average hourly earnings as indicated in the 1988 cost survey; K89 = average of the updated share of additional costs for 1989 (related to direct earnings).

Available series

Level (hourly cost and monthly cost) and structure of labour cost by labour cost component.

History of the survey

The survey began in 1982 within the framework of the harmonized labour cost surveys of the European Communities. The questionnaire for the 1992 survey incorporated the following modifications:

collection of data for all employees together (instead of separately for wage earners and salaried employees);
information to be supplied on hours worked and costs relating to temporary workers as well as on
hours actually worked for all employees, part-time and full-time;
separate treatment of non-obligatory pension costs (for example, insurance, independent pension funds, reserves).

Documentation

Statistical Office of the European Communities (EUROSTAT): Labour costs 1988 Vol. 1: Principal results; Vol. 2: Results by size class and by region (Luxembourg, 1992). Results which do not appear in national publications may be obtained on request from the Department of Statistics (MESS). They are available about 18 months after the reference year.

Confidentiality / Reliability criteria

By virtue of Act No. 6/89 of 15 April (Art. 5) concerning the national statistical system, the data collected are covered by statistical secrecy.

Other information

Data supplied to the ILO for publication

Statistics on monthly labour cost in manufacturing are published in Tables 22A and 22B of the Yearbook of Labour Statistics.