Netherlands

Source of the series

Collective Agreements and other wage laws and regulations.

Title of the series

Index Numbers of Wage Rates (Indexcijfers van cao-lonen).

Organization responsible

Data collection, statistical processing and publication/dissemination of the statistics:

Statistics Netherlands (Centraal Bureau voor Statistiek, CBS).

Main topics covered

Indices of contractual wages, working hours and labour costs.

Periodicity or frequency of availability of the statistics

Monthly and yearly.

Reference period

The last day of each month.

Coverage of the statistics

Geographical:

the whole country.

Industrial:

all branches of economic activity, except private households with employed persons (SBI95) and extra-territorial organizations and bodies (SBI99).

Establishments:

all types and sizes of establishments taking part in collective agreements.

Persons:

full-time employees.

Occupations:

all occupations are covered.

Concepts and definitions

Employment:

refers to full-time employees, i.e. persons working for a wage or a salary. Adults and youths are identified separately.

Wage rates:

refer to gross wage rates for hours normally worked, before any deductions are made for taxes, social security contributions, pension schemes, etc. They include: wages for normal working hours; all fixed, guaranteed and regular additional payments; and all fixed special payments (not regularly paid), e.g. holiday allowances or end-of-year bonuses. Excluded are additional payments that are conditionally agreed in the collective labour agreement, such as supplements for age or shift work.

Hours of work:

refer to the normal annual working hours per year for adult full-time employees as laid down in the collective labour agreement, i.e. the maximum number of working hours, excluding overtime, minus guaranteed paid public holidays (fixed at six days per year), annual leave and reduction of working hours as fixed by or in pursuance of laws, regulations or collective agreement. Conditional reduction of working hours due to age or shift work is not taken into account.

Labour cost rates:

include the wages and special payments as agreed in the collective labour agreement, as well as compulsory employer’s contributions to social insurance.

Classifications

Branch of economic activity (industry):

Title of the classification:

Standard Industrial Classification (SIC, SBI in Dutch, 1993).

Number of groups used for coding:

four sectors, 16 branches and a couple of classes.

Applied to:

all data.

Link to ISIC and level:

based on the EU economic activity classification (NACE, Rev.1) at the four-digit level, which is directly linked to ISIC, Rev.3, at the two-digit level.

Other classifications:

collective labour agreement sectors: i.e. a classification of enterprises in the private sector, the government sector and the subsidized sector; and employee category (youths and adults).

Data collection

Size and coverage of the administrative system:

covers all collective agreements (at present, over 900 agreements).

Data collection method:

the data are extracted from the records of collective agreements and other collective wage regulations. The statistical units are formed by a large number of well-defined points in collective labour agreements. These points represent a contractual pay level for a certain function group, often combined with indications for seniority, age or skill. A special establishment survey is conducted to determine the structure in the base year. It determines the collective agreements used and their distribution over the workforce groups. From this information estimates are made for every relevant collective agreement showing the distribution of workers for the salary structure and points of highest density are selected to develop a partial wage index. The current series uses 8100 salary points laid down in 354 collective agreements, out of a total of over 900 agreements. The current base year is 1990 and in principle, the sample of pay levels is revised every ten years.

Data processing, editing and consistency checks

Data which have been published in collective agreements are entered into a computerized system. For each collective agreement the evolution from the previous period is calculated. Figures which are out of range (much higher or lower than average) are checked again. Results are also compared with all other available information, for instance data published in newspapers.

Adjustments

Under-coverage:

monthly indices of contractual wages, labour costs and working hours are subject to change if new collective labour agreements or collective wage regulations come into effect. An adjusted index is published one month at the latest after a new collective labour agreement has become effective. Final figures for year t are published not later than in May of the year t+1.

Seasonal variations:

the data are not seasonally adjusted.

Types of estimates

Monthly and hourly indices of contractual wage rates, working hours and hourly labour costs.

Construction of indices

The 8,100 salary points are allocated a base weight in the base year (1990). These base weights are allocated on the basis of their mutual importance within a collective agreement or regulation. They are held constant through the years until the sample is updated. A second kind of weighting involves the yearly weighting of the industries, made up of collective agreements and regulations. This "external weighting", based on data originating from the System of National Accounts, takes account of the changes in the number of employees and wage bills per industry every year.

The partial indices computed at the level of the statistical units are weighted together to obtain Laspeyres wage indices for aggregates of economic activity. The present series are based on 1990=100.

Indicators of reliability of the estimates

Coverage of the administrative system:

the selection of collective labour agreements covers about 350 of them (40% of total), covering about 75% of all employees in 1990).

Available series

Monthly and hourly contractual wage rate indices including bonuses;

Monthly indices of contractual working hours;

Monthly indices of hourly labour costs;

by employee category, sector and branch of economic activity.

History of the statistics

Starting date of the statistical series:

the publication of these statistics started in 1926; the series of gross monthly and hourly wage rate indices, and the indices of contractual annual working hours, have been published monthly since 1980. Publication of some figures regarding hourly labour costs started in 1990.

Major changes and revisions:

the series of wage rate indices has been revised and improved upon regularly. There have been no methodological changes in the current time series.

A complete revision of these statistics is planned for 2003.

Documentation and dissemination

Documentation:

Statistics Netherlands: Statistisch Bulletin (Voorburg, weekly); the last issue of each month shows provisional wage rate and labour cost indices for the previous month. Final data are published no later than five months after the end of the end of the reference year. Idem: Sociaal-economische Maandstatistiek (Voorburg/Heerlen, monthly). Major changes in methodology are announced in advance in this publication.

A methodological description is also published in Supplement to the Monthly Bulletin of Socio-economic Statistics, 1993-3 4.

Dissemination:

on CBS web-site: http://www.cbs.nl

Methodological notes are also available on this site.

Data supplied to the ILO for dissemination

The following statistics are supplied to the ILO for publication in the Yearbook of Labour Statistic:

Indices of hourly wage rates by economic activity.

The corresponding monthly series are published in the Bulletin of Labour Statistics.

Other administrative sources of data:

a large number of administrative registers (population register, administration of employee insurance schemes, employment agency files, address and housing registers, etc.) are used in combination with business and household sample surveys, with a view to producing Statistics Netherlands’ integrated statistical information system on socio-demographic, socio-economic and socio-cultural characteristics of the population.