Labour cost index
Labour cost indices (wages and salaries; labour costs other than wages and salaries; total labour costs; total labour costs excluding bonuses) by economic activity sections (identified by letters B to S in EMTAK) | |
Estonian Classification of Economic Activities (EMTAK 2008) based on NACE Rev. 2 | |
Economically active units – enterprises, institutions, organisations (excl. economic units without employees) | |
Employers’ social and imputed contributions index – index which expresses the change of employers’ social and imputed contributions costs per hour. Labour cost – total of wages and salaries costs and social and imputed contributions costs. Labour cost excluding bonuses – labour cost which does not include irregular bonuses and additional remuneration (quarterly, annual and Christmas bonus, performance pay, etc.). Labour cost index – index which expresses the change of total labour costs per hour. Labour cost index excluding bonuses – index which expresses the change of total labour costs per hour excluding bonuses. Number of hours worked – hours actually worked by full-time and part-time employees, incl. time spent on tasks such as work preparation, repairing and cleaning equipment and devices, completing job tasks and reports; time spent at the place of work but not worked, e.g. machine stoppages, tea and coffee breaks, and overtime hours. Seasonally adjusted index – expresses the change in the cost per hour, if not affected by regularly occurring seasonal factors. Social and imputed contributions cost – social tax, employer’s unemployment insurance premium, employer’s agreed and voluntary payments: agreed and voluntary insurance to employees (life, health, accident insurance, etc.) and agreed and voluntary payments to pension, medical, unemployment insurance schemes, etc. It includes employer’s allowances in the case of sickness, accident at work or occupational disease; allowances for ending working relationship; employer benefits for medical care and for employee on parental leave and for former employees (allowances, pensions, etc.); one-time allowance in the case of a jubilee, birth or death; stipends and tuition payments for employees and their family members, etc. Wages and salaries cost – time-rate and piece-rate payments; additional remuneration for overtime work, night work and holiday work, for work in difficult and unhealthy conditions; regular additional remuneration for qualifications, language and length of service, etc.; holiday pay (unused holiday pay) and benefits; work stoppage payment; pay during strike and lock-out; average payment due to no work provided by the employer or a work obstacle; pay for the time spent in formal or work-related training; payment in kind. This also includes additional remuneration and bonuses (monthly, quarterly and annual bonus, Christmas bonus, cost-of-living compensation, etc.). This also includes indirect allowances: discounts for transportation to work and home; subsidies to cafeterias, food coupons (vouchers) for employees; subsidies to kindergartens or day cares or payment of kindergarten and day care fees for the employee; subsidies to sales facilities and shops; various discounts in culture, sports, leisure and service areas; payments to trade union funds; employer payments for savings schemes for employees (employer saving schemes, stock purchase schemes, etc.). Wages and salaries index – index which expresses the change of wages and salaries costs per hour. Working-day adjusted index – expresses the change in the cost per hour taking into account the number of work days. | |
Economic unit | |
Economically active units – enterprises, institutions, organisations (excl. economic units without employees) All state and local government institutions as well as units with 50 or more employees are surveyed. For other units, i.e. enterprises with fewer than 50 employees, simple random sample method is applied. FRAME List of economically active units (excl. economic units without employees). The list is generated from the Business Register for Statistical Purposes. | |
Estonia as a whole | |
Labour cost indices 2000–… | |
The base year for the indices is 2016 = 100. |
DIRECTLY APPLICABLE LEGAL ACTS Regulation (EC) No 450/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 February 2003 concerning the labour cost index Commission Regulation (EC) No 224/2007 of 1 March 2007 amending Regulation (EC) No 1216/2003 as regards the economic activities covered by the labour cost index Commission Regulation (EC) No 1216/2003 of 7 July 2003 implementing Regulation (EC) No 450/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning the labour cost index OTHER LEGAL ACTS Not available OTHER AGREEMENTS Not available |
The dissemination of data collected for the purpose of producing official statistics is guided by the requirements provided for in § 32, § 34, § 35, § 38 of the Official Statistics Act. | |
The dissemination of data collected for the production of official statistics is based on the requirements laid down in §§ 34 and 35 of the Official Statistics Act. The principles for treatment of confidential data can be found here. |
Notifications about the dissemination of statistics are published in the release calendar, which is available on the website. Every year on 1 October, the release times of the statistical database, news releases, main indicators by IMF SDDS and publications for the following year are announced in the release calendar (in the case of publications – the release month). | |
All users have been granted equal access to official statistics: dissemination dates of official statistics are announced in advance and no user category (incl. Eurostat, state authorities and mass media) is provided access to official statistics before other users. Official statistics are first published in the statistical database. If there is also a news release, it is published simultaneously with data in the statistical database. Official statistics are available on the website at 8:00 a.m. on the date announced in the release calendar. |
Not published | |
Not published | |
Data are published in the statistical database at https://andmed.stat.ee/en/stat under the subject area “Economy / Wages and salaries and labour costs / Labour cost indices” in the following tables: PAT21: Labour cost indices (LCI) by economic activity, 2016 = 100 (quarterly) PAT22: Labour cost indices (LCI), changes over previous year by economic activity | |
The dissemination of data collected for the purpose of producing official statistics is guided by the requirements provided for in § 33, § 34, § 35, § 36, § 38 of the Official Statistics Act. Access to microdata and anonymisation of microdata are regulated by Statistics Estonia’s procedure for dissemination of confidential data for scientific purposes. | |
Not used | |
Regulation (EC) No 450/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 February 2003 concerning the labour cost index http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2003:069:0001:0005:EN:PDF Commission Regulation (EC) No 1216/2003 of 7 July 2003 implementing Regulation (EC) No 450/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning the labour cost index http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CONSLEG:2003R1216:20090101:EN:PDF Commission Regulation (EC) No 224/2007 of 1 March 2007 amending Regulation (EC) No 1216/2003 as regards the economic activities covered by the labour cost index http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2007:064:0023:0024:EN:PDF | |
Quality report submitted to Eurostat |
To assure the quality of processes and products, Statistics Estonia applies the EFQM Excellence Model, the European Statistics Code of Practice and the Quality Assurance Framework of the European Statistical System (ESS QAF). Statistics Estonia is also guided by the requirements in § 7. “Principles and quality criteria of producing official statistics” of the Official Statistics Act. | |
Statistics Estonia performs all statistical activities according to an international model (Generic Statistical Business Process Model – GSBPM). According to the GSBPM, the final phase of statistical activities is overall evaluation using information gathered in each phase or sub-process; this information can take many forms, including feedback from users, process metadata, system metrics and suggestions from employees. This information is used to prepare the evaluation report which outlines all the quality problems related to the specific statistical activity and serves as input for improvement actions. |
Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications | |
Since 1996, Statistics Estonia has conducted reputation and user satisfaction surveys. All results are available on the website of Statistics Estonia in the section User surveys. | |
In compliance with the rules (regulations) |
The definitions and classifications used in Estonia comply with international definitions and classifications ensuring international comparability of the data. | |
The data are comparable over time since 2000. The data meet the international quality criteria applied to transmitted current and back data. | |
Data collection for labour costs statistics is closely related to other statistics in the same field. Coherence issues (differences in coverage, definitions and/or methodology) should be taken into account when comparing data related to the same variables from different sources (Labour Cost Survey, National Accounts). | |
The outputs of the statistical activity are coherent. The higher-level aggregate data are calculated on the basis of detailed data according to calculation rules. |
The data revision policy and notification of corrections are described in the section Principles of dissemination of official statistics of the website of Statistics Estonia. | |
The published data may be revised if the methodology is modified, errors are discovered, new or better data become available. |
SURVEY DATA Total population is 81,500 objects. The sample includes 1,875 objects per month and 5,125 objects per quarter. As a sampling frame, the statistical profile based on the database of the Ministry of Justice Centre of Registers and Information Systems is used; the statistical profile is updated every year and a stratified simple random sample is drawn. Enterprises, institutions and organisations with at least 50 employees are completely enumerated. The remaining part of the population is divided into two: enterprises with 1–9 employees and enterprises with 10–49 employees. ADMINISTRATIVE DATA Data from the employment register of the Estonian Tax and Customs Board are used to pre-fill in the questionnaires. DATA FROM OTHER STATISTICAL ACTIVITIES Since 2018 data are collected with questionnaire “Wages and salaries and labour force” (statistical activity 21101 “Wages and salaries”). | |
Monthly | |
Data are collected and the submission of questionnaires is monitored through eSTAT (the web channel for electronic data submission). The questionnaires have been designed for independent completion in eSTAT and include instructions and controls. The questionnaires and information about data submission are available on the website of Statistics Estonia in the section Questionnaires. Starting from 2018, it is possible to submit wages and salaries and labour costs data directly from accounting software. Data are collected with the monthly official statistics questionnaire “Wages and salaries and labour force”. The data from the Tax and Customs Board are received via X-Road and an FTP-server. | |
Arithmetic and qualitative checks are used in the validation process, including checking that the population coverage and response rates are as required, comparison with the data of previous periods, other surveys and with administrative data sources. | |
If the data is odered then missing data of nonrespondents belonging to the completely enumerated part of the population are imputed by using the hot deck method. If the number of employees of a nonrespondent is larger than 100, the missing data of this unit are imputed by the data of the previous period of the same unit. Let us consider first the part of the population which is investigated by sample survey. It is assumed that among the nonrespondents of each stratum there are relatively as many economically active units as among the respondents of this stratum. The missing data of those assumed to be active nonrespondents are imputed by the corresponding means of the active respondents. As a matter of fact, within a stratum equal response probability is assumed. Then the design weights are calculated and aggregate indicators are computed on the basis of collected data. | |
Time series are seasonally and working-day adjusted. |
Since 2018, the samples of statistical activities 21101 “Wages and salaries” and 21104 “Job vacancies and labour turnover” and questionnaires (1085, 1380, 1364, 1379) are merged. Since 2018, the population includes economic entities with at least one employee (previously the population was based on persons employed), non-profit associations and foundations with less than 50 employees are added to the population and the sample has been optimized. Since 2018, data are requested with new questionnaire 1462 “Wages and salaries and labour force”, while previously questionnaires 1085 “Wages and salaries” and 1380 “Wages and salaries by county” were used. |