06.05 - Wages and labour costs
Every fourth year
National level
225 - Division for Income and Wage Statistics
Statistics Act Sections 2-2 and 2-3.
Council Regulation (EC) no. 530/1999 of 9 March 1999 Concerning Structural Statistics for Wages and Labour Costs and Commissions Regulation (EC) nr. 1737/2005 of 21. October 2005 and Commissions Regulation (EC) nr. 698/2006 of 5. May 2006
Eurostat
The purpose of the statistics is to provide an overview of the total costs of having an employee. The statistics was established in 1998 with statistics for the year 1996.
Major users are Eurostat, the Technical Reporting Committee on the Income Settlement, business and industry.
The population covers all enterprises, with 10 or more employees, in Statistics Norway's Central Register of Establishments and Enterprises in major industries except for the public sector and the primary sector. The enterprise must have been active during all of 2008.
Information about wage and salary costs are gathered from the End of the Year Certificate Register. Information about the number of full and part-time employees are gathered from the Work and Welfare administration.
Information from the registers is verified and information about other costs is gathered from an electronic questionnaire sent out to all enterprises included in the sample. The questionnaire includes questions about salaries in kind, safety and health, training costs and taxes for each enterprise.
The sample consists of enterprises randomly drawn from a population. Enterprises with less than ten employees are excluded from the sample.
The sample includes both a representative sample and a complete count. The complete count includes all enterprises with a sufficient number of employees while the sample is a stratified, random sample of small and medium-sized enterprises.
The purpose of the sampling is to both find a representative sample for the survey and to avoid burdening all enterprises with questionnaires. An effort has been made to ensure that small enterprises are also least burdened by questionnaires.
The sample includes about 4,000 enterprises
Data is collected from electronic questionnaires, or on paper questionnaires sent out on request from the enterprise. Responding online has been possible since 2004 through web on Statistics Norway's service IDUN. For 2008, 98% of enterprises responded electronically.
The data is revised and controlled through several processes, both automatically and manually. Additionally, the electronic questionnaire had some built-in controls that ensured a minimal level of consistency between the different posts in the questionnaire.
Automatic controls correct mathematical mistakes and limit or reduces data that are not within a reasonable range. Some data points were also imputed where the enterprise had missing values or values that were obviously erroneous.
Important units with large deviations were revised manually and compared with other sources, mainly the annual accounts of the enterprises in question.
The collected data should represent the average level of labour costs in the industries included in the survey and the data is therefore weighted.
The population is stratified by industry and size as measured by number of employees. The largest enterprises in each industry are all included. For enterprises with fewer employees a sample is drawn, ranging from 5 to 50 percent of the population.
The weighting is based on the inverse probability of inclusion in the sample such that the weighted number of employees in the sample is equal to the number of employees in the population. The weighting is based on enterprises with sufficient data quality such that any biases introduce by variably data quality is adjusted for.
Average costs are calculated by divided the weighted total costs by the weighted number of full-time equivalent employees.
Not relevant.
Total labour cost is the employers' total cost of having employees. This includes both direct and indirect costs.
Direct cost is salaries and wages and is defined as all cash compensation to employees
Payment for days not worked is a subset of direct costs and includes wages during leaves, extra days off. Does not include vacation pay.
Indirect costs includes salaries in kind, health and safety measures, social costs, employers' social contribution, other taxes and training costs.
Salaries in kind represent compensation, services and benefits that are not in cash.
Safety and health includes company health services and various safety measures.
Training costs is the employers' costs for employees' particiation in external courses, educationl spending, apprenticeships, recruitment costs and other costs connected with training employees.
Employers' social contribution is the mandatory cost of participation in the national social security scheme. It is paid as a percentage of wages, vacation pay and contributions to pension plans.
The Number of full-time equivalent employees is calculated based on the number of full-time and part-time employees and the number of hours each employee worked in 2008. This information is gathered from the questionnaire and/or the Work and Welfare administration (NAV). This is then expressed as number of full-time equivalents, where 1950 hours is considered as the full-time equivalent for a year. The statistic includes all employees regardless of tasks.
The industries are classified according to the official standard industrial classification SN 2007, which is the Norwegian version of the European NACE rev. 2.
For 2008 the statistics are published according to both SN 2002 and SN 2007. For earlier editions, SN 2002 is used.
Measurement errors are introduced when the questionnaires are either misunderstood or the information requested is difficult to obtain.
The statistics are also based on data from several registers. Errors can be introduced by variable or lagging update frequency. E.g., enterprises that merged in December are in certain registers counted as one enterprise while other registers maintain the original number.
Non-Response For 2008 about 5 percent of the sample did not respond. In earlier surveys about 3-6 percent failed to respond. The main reason is that the enterprise no longer has employees due to cessation of activities, bankruptcy, mergers or acquisition by new owner. Moreover, certain enterprises consistently fail to respond while others respond so belatedly that they are not included from the survey.
Partial non-response Enterprises may not respond to certain questions that are hard to quantify, e.g. health and safety and wages during sick leaves or other leaves.
All sample-based surveys will be burdened with a certain uncertainty. Generally, the results are less certain the fewer the observations they are based on. Uncertainty also depends on costs dispersion and rate of coverage for the various variables in the population from which the sample is drawn. Groups that are based on relatively few observations will easily be affected by so-called extreme observations, or observations that deviate markedly from the group average. Such extreme observations are carefully considered on a case-by-case basis for inclusion in the statistical basis
Incorrect industry codes and/or employment data in Statistics Norway's Register of Establishments and Enterprises during the selection of the sample may result in the establishments being placed in the wrong industry or selection stratum.
The labour costs statistics were produced for the first time in 1996, and are comparable with that year with exception of transport and communication. Due to an increase in the sample size in 2000 the total numbers are not comparable with those from 1996. From 2008 statistics has been published according to the new industry standard SN2007. The same year statistics were also published according to the old industry standard (SN2002) so that the statistics are comparable with previous years.
The statistics are to a certain degree comparable with the development in the wage statistics. For further information see the subject page for wage and Wage totals from End of the Year Certificate.
The statistics are published electronically as Today's Statistics on Statistics Norway's website. The statistics are released at 10.00 on the day listed in the statistics calendar .
Files with labour costs data and estimation programs are stored.
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