Romania - 1

Title of the survey

Average number of employees and earnings (Survey S1).

Organization responsible

National Commission for Statistics, Division of labour statistics and social protection, Office of wages statistics.

Periodicity of the survey

Monthly.

Objectives of the survey

To obtain information on the number of employees and their earnings. The results of the survey are essential for calculating various indicators which are used by policy makers and various other users.

Main labour topics covered by the survey

Employment and earnings.

Reference period

For employment: the whole month and the end of the month;

For earnings: the whole month.

Coverage of the survey

Geographical

The whole country.

Industrial

All branches of economic activity, except defence; compulsory social security; private households with employed persons; and the armed forces.

Establishments

Enterprises of all types of ownership and size except in industrial activities where enterprises with 5 or more employees are covered.

Persons

All national employees. Expatriate workers and foreigners are excluded.

Occupations

The survey does not collect data by occupation.

Concepts and definitions

Employment

Employees are all persons with an employment contract for a fixed or unlimited period in an economic or social unit, who work on a full- or part-time basis for a remuneration in cash or in kind. They include working proprietors and directors who receive a salary, wage earners, salaried employees, trainees, workers on probation, piece workers, casual, temporary and seasonal workers. Persons temporarily absent from work because of paid or unpaid vacation, industrial dispute, sickness or accident are also included.

Excluded from employees are apprentices, home workers, workers sub-contracted from other enterprises or from temporary work agencies, unpaid contributing family workers and persons temporarily absent from work for active military service.

Earnings

Data are collected on gross earnings. They include regular straight-time pay, overtime payments, regularly and irregularly paid bonuses, payments for time not worked (e.g. indemnities for rest and study leave, holidays, sick leave), other payments from the salary fund according to law, regulations or collective labour contracts, amounts paid from the net profit and other sources, as well as payments in kind.

Information is collected separately on bonuses paid on a regular and irregular basis and on the value of payments in kind.

Excluded are cost-of-living and family allowances paid directly by the employer.

Net earnings are obtained by subtracting employees' income tax from gross earnings. Net and gross earnings include employees' contributions to pension schemes (5%) and unemployment fund (1%).

Wage / salary rates

They comprise basic wage rates and guaranteed payments in kind. Cost-of-living allowances are excluded.

Hours of work

Not relevant. (See under Other sources of data.)

International recommendations

The definitions of wage rates and earnings closely conform to the international guidelines.

Classifications

Industrial

Data are classified according to the Classification of Activities of the National Economy (CANE), at the two-digit level. This classification is convertible to the Statistical Classification of economic activities of the European Communities (NACE, Rev. 1) and to the International Standard Industrial Classification of all economic activities (ISIC), Rev. 3.

Occupational

Not relevant.

Others

Not relevant.

Sample size and design

Statistical unit

The sampling unit is the enterprise, defined as the smallest combination of legal units having legal personality: it has its own patrimony, can entail contracts and defend its interests in the court of justice.

For some large units, such as state-owned enterprises or public administration units, the reporting unit is the local unit, which is a subsidiary of an enterprise, situated in a single location, without legal personality.

Survey universe / sample frame

The survey universe consists of the Statistical Register (REGIS) which covers all active civil enterprises (i.e. excluding units of national defence) in Romania, as well as public administration units. It covers about 310,000 units representing some 6 million employees.

The frame for the sample part of the survey is derived from the REGIS and administered by the National Commission for Statistics. It comprises some 47,000 active enterprises with 5 and more employees, covering about 97.3% of the total number of employees. The REGIS is updated quarterly on the basis of the Fiscal Register and National Commerce Register, and twice a year from the records provided by the Ministry of Finance.

Sample design

National state-owned enterprises, units from public administration, units in financing and insurance as well as enterprises employing 50 employees or more in industry (e.g. mining and quarrying, manufacturing and energy supply - NACE 10-41 or ISIC-3 C to E) are covered by complete enumeration. The other units are stratified by economic activity at the 2-digit level of NACE Rev.1 and selected with unequal probabilities. The total number of enterprises surveyed is about 8,000, out of which some 6,300 are included by sampling. The overall sampling rate is about 2.5%, ranging from 3/1000 in wholesale and retail trade to 8/10 in production of energy. The number of employees covered by the sample ranges from 28% in wholesale and retail trade, to 99% in industry. The survey covers 74% of all employees.

The births and deaths of enterprises are compensated by calibration (see Other bias).

Field work

Data collection

The survey forms are transmitted by the 15th of each month to the Division of labour statistics, either by mail or by hand.

Survey questionnaire

Not available.

Substitution of sampling units

Sampling units where there is total non-response are not replaced.

Data processing and editing

Data are processed and edited by computer. Responses are coded onto the questionnaires, then entered and verified by computer. In cases of missing data, respondents are contacted by telephone.

Types of estimates

Monthly number of employees and average monthly earnings by economic activity.

The average number of employees is obtained from a simple arithmetical mean, by dividing the sum of the daily actual number of employees during a calendar month by the total number of days of that month. Part-time workers are converted to full-time equivalents.

Construction of indices

An index of real earnings is compiled on the basis of 1990 = 100.

Weighting of sample results

The survey results are weighted using the Horvitz-Thompson estimator, according to the following formula:

where

T: the estimated total number of employees
n: sample size
t_i: number of employees of unit i from the sample
P_i: the inclusion probability

and

where

n: sample size
N: number of units in the sampling frame
F_i: number of employees of unit i from the sample
F_j: number of employees of unit j from the sampling frame.

Adjustments

Non-response

An adjustment is provided for in the weighting procedure.

Other bias

A second adjustment is made by marginal calibration on the distribution of employees from the updated sampling frame.

Use of benchmark data

Not relevant.

Seasonal variations

The results are not seasonally adjusted.

Indicators of reliability of the estimates

Coverage of the sampling frame

The sampling frame covers about 97% of the total number of employees.

Sampling error / sampling variance

The theoretical standard error ranges from 2% in industry (NACE divisions 10-41) to 6.3% in wholesale and retail trade.

Non-response rate

In October 1998, it was about 11%.

Non-sampling errors

Not available.

Conformity with other sources

Not applicable.

Available series

Published tables include (i) monthly gross and net earnings by economic activity and for the whole economy with comparisons with the previous month and (ii) the corresponding number of employees at the end of the month.

History of the survey

The survey dates back to 1991. The questionnaires have been revised to follow changes in the national legislation. Changes in the questionnaire design will probably take place in the future. Starting in the year 2000, the sample design will be modified: stratified random sampling - by district, economic activity and size class in terms of number of employees - will be used, with Neyman allocation.

Documentation

National Commission for Statistics: Monthly Statistical Bulletin (Bucharest);

idem: Quarterly Statistical Bulletin (ibid.).

The survey results are published one month after the survey reference period. Published data can also be made available on diskette, upon request.

idem: Romanian Statistical Yearbook (ibid.).

Web-site address: http://www.cns.ro

Confidentiality / Reliability criteria

Details in respect of individual enterprises are strictly confidential.

Other information

Data supplied to the ILO for publication

The following data are published in the Yearbook of Labour Statistics: Paid employment and average monthly earnings of employees, by economic activity and in manufacturing, by industry group.

The corresponding monthly series of paid employment and earnings are published in the Bulletin of Labour Statistics.

Other sources of data

Since 1993, The National Commission for Statistics of Romania conducts an annual survey entitled Distribution of employees by wage groups and salaries by occupation (S2), with reference to the month of October.

This survey covers enterprises of all types of ownership and size, and the industrial coverage is the same as that of the monthly survey on employees and earnings (S1).

The main objective of this survey is to collect information on the distribution of employees by wage groups, average wages by occupation, economic activity and sex, normal hours of work and weekly hours paid for in October.

Data are collected on the number of employees as of 31st October (of which, the number of women) and on the number of full-time employees who have worked at least twenty-two days during that month; on basic wage rates and gross earnings per month, normal hours of work, and hours paid for per week, by sex, for selected occupations within industry groups, at the four-digit level of the national classification of occupations based on ISCO-1988.

The definition of gross earnings corresponds to that if the monthly survey. Premium pay for overtime and profit-sharing bonuses are identified separately.

Hours paid for include hours actually worked during normal periods of work and overtime, and hours paid for but not worked due to vacation, holidays, personal, study and professional training leave, and breaks at the workplace due to employers' financial difficulties. Normal hours of worked are those fixed by law, regulations and collective agreements.

Data on wage rates, earnings and hours paid for are collected for employees working and paid on a full-time basis in October, excluding apprentices, home workers, part-time workers and beginners.

The methods for data collection and processing are identical to those of the monthly survey. Enterprises are stratified by economic activity and selected with equal probabilities. Some 17,000 units covering about 4,700,000 employees and representing 81% of all employees are sampled; the sampling rate ranges from 5/10,000 in wholesale and retail trade to 99% in industry. In the 1997 survey, the non-response rate was 19.4%

The following tables are regularly prepared on the basis of this survey:

distribution of employees by gross monthly earnings,
average gross earnings of employees who worked less than 22 days in October,
number of employees, average wage rates, earnings, normal hours and hours paid for of employees having worked full time in October, by occupation and sex.

The data are published once a year in: National Commission for Statistics of Romania: Distribution of employees by achieved wages in October (annual, July; Bucharest).

The results of this survey (S2) are published by the ILO in Statistics on occupational wages and hours of work and on food prices - October Inquiry results, a special supplement to the ILO Bulletin of Labour Statistics.

Until 1998, a survey entitled Movement of employees and utilisation of hours worked was conducted quarterly, with reference to the second month of each quarter. It provided data on the average number of employees, by category and sex; labour turnover during the month; normal hours of work, hours actually worked and use of working time.

Statistics of average daily hours actually worked by employees and wage earners, by economic activity and in manufacturing, by industry group, were published in the ILO Yearbook of Labour Statistics.

This survey has been discontinued. Starting in the year 2000, the National Commission for Statistics intends to introduce a new section on hours actually worked in the survey (S3), Number of employees and labour cost.