Costa Rica
Source of the series
Records of the Costa Rican Social Security Fund (Planillas de la Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social - CCSS).
Title of the series
Statistics of employers, workers and wages.
Organization responsible
Data collection:
Costa Rican Social Security Fund, Actuarial and Economic Planning Directorate.
Statistical processing:
Costa Rican Social Security Fund, Information Technology Department.
Publication/dissemination of the statistics:
Costa Rican Social Security Fund, Executive Presidency, Actuarial and Economic Planning Directorate, Department of Statistics.
Main topics covered
Employment, earnings and income from employment.
Periodicity or frequency of availability of the statistics
Once a year.
Reference period
June each year.
Coverage of the statistics
Geographical:
the whole country.
Industrial:
all branches of economic activity.
Establishments:
all types and sizes.
Persons:
employers and workers affiliated to CCSS health and pension schemes (for all institutional sectors) and non-wage workers affiliated to the voluntary insurance scheme (self-employed and special agreements).
Occupations:
data are not collected on individual occupations or occupational groups.
Concepts and definitions
Employment:
includes the following categories of persons in employment affiliated to the CCSS.
Employer: the natural or legal person, private or public, who uses the services of one or more persons covered by the social security schemes.
Insured worker (wage worker, employee): the person who works for an employer and receives remuneration for her/his work in the form of a wage, salary, day wage or piecework, in cash or in kind.
Self-employed worker (independent worker): a person who works alone or with partner(s), without establishing a dependent relationship with an employer.
Worker under special agreements: groups of independent workers organized in associations, trade unions, cooperatives, professional bodies, rotary clubs, homes, museums, etc., who sign an agreement with the CCSS for their insurance.
Direct insured person (contributor/actively employed): a person who by a contribution (quota) generates for him/herself and others the right to receive certain social security benefits. This contribution is paid directly or through third parties (employers).
Earnings:
the total wage base, i.e. the total wages reported by direct insured persons in the monthly list. It does not include voluntary insured persons, the self-employed and workers under special agreements.
The average wage is the remuneration received on average each month by a wage worker.
Income related to self-employment:
refers to "contributory income", and corresponds to the total income reported by independent workers on which the contribution is calculated (analogous to the wages of actively employed direct insured workers).
Average income: the monthly average income remuneration reported by an independent worker.
Contribution base: the total wages and income reported by employees and independent workers respectively for a given month.
Classifications
Branch of economic activity (industry):
Title of the classification:
Manual of Codes of Economic Activities.
Number of groups used for coding:
All groups to 4-digit level.
Applied to:
all data.
Link to ISIC and level:
Rev.3, 1990, at all levels.
Status in employment:
Title of the classification:
CCSS classification.
Number of groups used for coding:
four groups: employers, independent workers (self-employed), employees and workers under special agreements (groups).
Applied to:
all data.
Link to ICSE and level:
partial link at one-digit level.
Other classifications:
by institutional sector: 6 institutional sectors are defined: Central Government, autonomous and semiautonomous institutions, private enterprises, self-employed, special agreements and domestic services. Data are also classified by territorial administrative division: 7 provinces which are divided into 81 cantons: by age group and sex, and size of enterprise.
Data collection
Size and coverage of the administrative system:
in June 2000, the records used covered some 52,040 employers, 1,038,816 workers in all institutional sectors and some 313,000 non-wage workers affiliated to the voluntary insurance scheme (self-employed and special agreements), all affiliated to the health insurance scheme.
Data collection method:
statistics on employers, workers and wages are collected from various sources of information: (i) monthly lists submitted by employers affiliated to the CCSS with details of workers, wages and economic activity, for the private enterprise, domestic services, autonomous institutions and special agreement sectors; (ii) the government's office automation department provides information on Central Government workers; and (iii) self-employed workers and some special agreements are obtained from CCSS membership records. The data collected from these sources are processed by the Information Technology Department, which provides the information to the Department of Statistics in the Actuarial and Economic Planning Directorate, in text files which are input to the system designed to generate statistics.
Updating of the administrative system:
once a year.
Data processing, editing and consistency checks
The data are processed by computer and the system makes the necessary adjustments.
Adjustments
The process of data collection and processing can give rise to errors inherent in that process, such as "unknown" categories in various classifications of workers (sex, age, branch of activity or income unknown). A similar situation occurs with the contribution base. In adjusting the statistics to apportion the workers of unknown sex and the contribution base in the appropriate categories, rounding differences may occur. However, these differences are kept below 1 per cent.
Types of estimates
All persons insured under the various schemes (health and pensions), by category and various classifications;
Total and average monthly wages and incomes, by category of insured person and by various classifications;
Distributions of insured persons by level of monthly wages and sector.
Construction of indices
None.
Indicators of reliability of the estimates
Not available.
Available series
Employers, insured workers and contribution base by sex, institutional sector, province and canton, by sector, branch of activity and size of enterprise.
Insured workers by branch of economic activity, age group, sector, level of monthly salary, etc.;
Average wages and incomes.
History of the statistics
Starting date of the statistical series:
January 1973.
Major changes and revisions:
not available.
Documentation and dissemination
Documentation:
Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social: Anuario Estadístico (San Jose, annual); each publication gives the data for June of the previous year.
Dissemination:
on the CCSS website: http://www.ccss.sa.cr/actuarial/publicaciones.html.
Data supplied to the ILO for dissemination
Statistics of average earnings of employees were published in the Yearbook of Labour Statistics until 1986 and can be found in the LABORSTA database.