The present Volume 2 of Sources and Methods: Labour Statistics presents methodological descriptions of establishment surveys from which statistics of employment, wages, hours of work and labour cost are obtained. It is a revised, enlarged and updated version of the second edition issued in 1995 and contains descriptions for 172 surveys in respect of 84 countries, areas and territories.
These establishment surveys are generally conducted each month or quarter, half-yearly or annually, etc. The corresponding statistical series are published online in the ILO’s central statistical database, ILOSTAT (http://www.ilo.org/ilostat).
The descriptions presented here were prepared on the basis of information provided by national statistical agencies or governments in response to a specially designed questionnaire on employment, hours of work, wages, and labour cost/compensation of employees. In some cases, the information was collected from information published on the respective website of the National Statistical Office (NSO) or the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Special Data Dissemination Standard. Each description was submitted to the country concerned for comments, which were taken into account if received within the limits of the publication programme. The descriptions are structured and presented using standard sections and headings in order to facilitate comparisons. The headings of the descriptions related to statistics of labour cost or compensation of employees are not all the same as those relating to the statistics of employment, wages and hours of work. However, the format has been kept as similar as the treatment of the two subjects permits. The respective headings and their contents are described below.