New Caledonia
Source of the series
Records of the Compensation Fund for Family Allowances, Occupational Accidents and Pensions for Workers in New Caledonia and Dependencies (Caisse de Compensation des Prestations Familiales, des Accidents du Travail et Prévoyance des Travailleurs - CAFAT).
Title of the series
Employment and wages in New Caledonia.
Organization responsible
Data collection:
Compensation Fund for Family Allowances, Occupational Accidents and Pensions for Workers in New Caledonia and Dependencies (CAFAT) and Fiscal Services Department (Direction des Services Fiscaux - DSF).
Statistical processing and publication/dissemination of the statistics:
Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (Institut de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques - ISEE), New Caledonia.
Main topics covered
Paid employment, wages and duration of employment.
Periodicity or frequency of availability of the statistics
Paid employment:
quarterly;
Wages:
annual;
Duration of employment:
annual.
Reference period
Wage employees:
the quarter;
Wages and duration of employment:
the year.
Coverage of the statistics
Geographical:
the whole territory.
Industrial:
all branches of economic activity, including domestic services.
Establishments:
all types and sizes of establishment.
Persons:
all employees, and all employers, registered with CAFAT.
Occupations:
in wages statistics, data are collected by socioprofessional category.
Concepts and definitions
Employment:
paid employment refers to all employees in New Caledonia apart from apprentices and trainees.
In the statistics on wages, the annual number of employees, or number of jobs, includes employees who have worked for more than one employer during the year. They are counted as many times as the number of jobs. The average annual number of employees, or permanent full-time equivalent, is the theoretical number of full-time employees throughout the year.
Earnings:
means the total gross annual payroll, i.e. all net wages, including emoluments, paid holidays, benefits in kind or in cash and bonuses, increased by employees’ social contributions from wages. The average monthly wage corresponds to the payroll for the year for one full-time employee for one month.
Hours of work:
corresponds to an employee's duration of employment (in months) during a year.
Classifications
Branch of economic activity (industry):
Title of the classification:
ISEE nomenclature of activities (Nomenclature d’Activité ISEE).
Number of groups used for coding:
39 groups, after change from CAFAT nomenclature of activities to the ISEE nomenclature of sectors and activities.
Applied to:
all data.
Link to ISIC and level:
none.
Occupation:
in the statistics on wages, two classifications are used:
Title of the classification:
ISEE nomenclature of vocational qualifications (Nomenclature de Qualification Professionnelle ISEE).
Number of groups used for coding:
10 groups, after change from CAFAT nomenclature of socio-professional categories to the ISEE nomenclature of vocational qualifications.
Applied to:
all data.
Link to ISCO and level:
none.
Status in employment:
Title of the classification:
Nomenclature of socio-professional categories and qualification in the civil service (Nomenclature des Catégories Socio-Professionnelles et des Qualifications dans la fonction publique).
Number of groups used for coding:
80 at the most detailed level.
Applied to:
all data.
Link to ICSE and level:
none.
Other classifications:
quarterly paid employment; region (Nouméa, Interior and Combined Islands) and province.
Statistics on wages: sex, age, duration of employment, sector of activity, geographical area, size of establishment and cross classifications.
Data collection
Size and coverage of the administrative system:
exhaustive collection from employers.
Data collection method:
two main sources are used. The file of nominal declarations supplied quarterly by employers to CAFAT, which contains information on employment, duration of employment and wages in the private sector; and the file of nominal declarations of wages of the Fiscal Services Department, which contains, among others, the number and wages of civil servants.
For the statistics on wages, ISEE adjusts the files to construct a standard file for all wages. The wages data in the CAFAT file are gross values, in some cases truncated due to ceilings, while the DSF files are not capped, but are net wage values. The wages in CAFAT files below the ceiling are extracted without adjustments, and those which are capped are recalculated. The first step involves comparing these wages with wages in the DSF file, using an identifier made up of sex, date of birth and employer for each employee concerned. The second step is a calculation to determine the gross wages from the DSF files, by calculating the social charges for each wage. Since the employer is known, the values for social security contributions are either taken directly from the files of the various social security agencies mentioned above, or calculated by applying rules which define them (exceptional solidarity contribution) or are estimated (supplementary pensions). The global values for social security contributions determined in this way are then compared, for validation purposes, with figures published in company reports, profit and loss accounts and other administrative documents of the organizations concerned (various mutual organizations, Expatriate Pension Fund (CRE).
Updating of the administrative system:
quarterly.
Data processing, editing and consistency checks
The data are processed electronically.
For the statistics on wages, the assistance of the Administrative and Information Technology Methods Service (SMAI) was obtained to enhance the job classifications of public sector workers in 1995, and this served as a base for 1999. Consistency checks are carried out on wages and length of employment from different files.
Double counting:
the non nominal CAFAT and DSF files held by ISEE do not allow a determination of how many employees there are for different wage levels (the same employee may have worked for different employers during the year, successively or simultaneously). While the 1996 Population Census of New Caledonia counted 53,944 employees, the CAFAT and DSF files gave 79,893. In order to minimize errors in duration of employment and to gain a better appreciation of wage levels, statistics are also prepared on the basis of employees paid by the same employer for the 12 months of the year (not including domestic services).
Adjustments
Not available.
Types of estimates
Statistics on paid employment:
number of employees registered each quarter, and separately, number of employers registered.
Statistics on wages:
Duration of employment (in months) of an employee: number of hours of employment divided by 169, the legal working time of a fulltime month;
Average duration of employment (in months):
total duration of employment of all employees in the year, divided by the number of jobs. The sum of duration of employment of all employees is equal to the product of the annual number of employees divided by the average duration of employment, or the product of the annual average number of employees divided by 12.
Average annual employees or full-time equivalent:
sum of duration of employment (in months) of all employees in the year divided by 12.
Average monthly wage:
total payroll divided by the annual average number of employees, divided by 12.
Distribution and breakdown of jobs, wages and duration of employment according to different variables.
Construction of indices
None.
Indicators of reliability of the estimates
Coverage of the administrative system:
over 99% of employees.
Non-sampling errors:
in the statistics on wages, errors can occur in the duration of employment of employees. The DSF file does not always give the duration of employment. Neither of the CAFAT nor the DSF files provide full information on hours of work (number of hours, part-time, half-time, full time). The monthly wage is therefore estimated by dividing the wage by the number of employment months. This estimate has the disadvantage of under-estimating the actual level of part-time employees' monthly wages. The duration of employment of employees declared to the DSF is sometimes prone to errors. To reduce as far as possible the error in estimating the duration of employment and thus make the value for the monthly wage more reliable, a scrupulous comparison of the different files for 1999 was undertaken, and rectifications were made to duration of employment in 8,685 cases.
Conformity with other sources:
comparisons of numbers of employees were made with the results of the New Caledonia population census of 16 April 1996.
Available series
Quarterly statistics of paid employment:
number of employees and number of employers by branch of economic activity and region;
Statistics on wages:
Number of jobs by geographical area, sector of activity and activity, wage level and age, and cross-classifications;
Wages by sector of activity and activity, age, sex and age, geographical area and cross-classifications;
Distribution of jobs by duration of employment, wage level, professional qualification.
History of the statistics
Starting date of the statistical series:
not available.
Major changes and revisions:
not available.
Documentation and dissemination
Documentation:
ISEE: Informations statistiques (Nouméa, quarterly); presents statistics on paid employment for the previous quarter;
Idem: ISEE: Les Salaires - Situation en 1999 (Nouméa, October 2001); contains statistics and methodological information.
Data supplied to the ILO for dissemination
Statistics on paid employment (all economic activities) are published in the Yearbook of Labour Statistics. The corresponding quarterly statistics (separately for employees and for all persons engaged) are published in the Bulletin of Labour Statistics.