Statistics Finland

Business Statistics 

Työpajankatu 13, FI-00580 Helsinki

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New concept added with the migration to SIMS 2.0.
Information (content) will be available after the next collection.

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New concept added with the migration to SIMS 2.0.
Information (content) will be available after the next collection.

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New concept added with the migration to SIMS 2.0.
Information (content) will be available after the next collection.

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New concept added with the migration to SIMS 2.0.
Information (content) will be available after the next collection.

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New concept added with the migration to SIMS 2.0.
Information (content) will be available after the next collection.

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New concept added with the migration to SIMS 2.0.
Information (content) will be available after the next collection.

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New concept added with the migration to SIMS 2.0.
Information (content) will be available after the next collection.

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New concept added with the migration to SIMS 2.0.
Information (content) will be available after the next collection.

Finland compiles every year national Structure of Earnings Statistics. These statistics of 2014 formed the base for Eurostat’s Structure of Earnings Survey 2014. 

National SES

The national SES, which has been compiled since 1995, contained detailed information on roughly 1.32 million employment relationship on 2014. When the employment relationships are scaled (weighted) to the level of the whole population, they represent approximately 1.66 million employment relationship. In October 2014 Finland had 2.08 million employment relationships thus National SES’s coverage was around 80 percent of the whole population. Basically, the national SES covers all the employment relationships but the employees employed by private sector enterprises with less than 5 employees.

The statistics are based on sector-specific basic earnings data. The data from private sector is collected by Finnish employer organisations (9700 enterprises) and by Statistics Finland which conducts a sample survey (2 500 enterprises) among industries where unionization rate was under 70 percent at the given year. The private sector data is supplemented by Tax Authority’s dataset containing micro enterprises (n = 7 900). The data from the public sector is attained by Statistics Finland’s own data collection (local government sector) and from State Treasury (central government sector.) The Provincial Government of Åland collects data on the autonomous territory of the Åland Islands.

The data on different sectors are combined into a single database and common earnings concepts and classifications are defined for all wage and salary earners irrespective of their collective agreement or form of remuneration. This database is supplemented with data from other registers. For example, information on a wage or salary earner’s education is obtained from Statistics Finland’s Register of Completed Education and Degrees, and information on an employee's local unit gathered from Employment statistics.

Structure of Earnings Survey 2014

Finnish Structure of Earnings Survey for 2014 is based, as indicated, on national Structure of Earnings Statistics. The data delivered to Eurostat is a 25% random sample of employees and employers from the national earnings data. The data contain 315 187 employees and 45 631 local units. The data content of Structure of Earnings Survey is according the Council regulation and its amendments and it includes all the mandatory variables.

SES14 is supplemented, in contrast to the national SES, with earnings data for private sector enterprises’ senior management and air transport personnel derived from national tax registers. Also, to estimate variable B31 (number of weeks to which the gross annual earnings relate), various registers based variables originated from National Pensions Institute retained by Statistics Finland have been applied.  

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The public sector data are total data and are not adjusted for non-response. The private sector data are scaled to the level of the population using a survey frame formed from the Business Register. The estimator assigns more weight to observations from those enterprises whose stratum had the biggest non-response measured with number of employees. Estimation is performed so that the frame for unionised enterprises and the frame for non-unionised enterprises in the sample industries are estimated separately by stratum. The strata is formed according to the enterprises’ size category and industry. As the survey frame is sampled before the statistical reference time, a separate stratum is formed of the new enterprises with at least 5 employees which are added to the frame. The weighting coefficient of this stratum is 1.

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New concept added with the migration to SIMS 2.0.
Information (content) will be available after the next collection.

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The results are used by the public, the media, researchers and various organizations. The two former use Structure of Earnings Statistics through Statistic Finland’s databases or send specific questions directly to Statistics Finland. Their need consists most simple tabulations regarding information on the earnings classified by economic activity, occupation, gender, region and age.

Researchers and organisations are in demand of a more detailed data. Researchers can obtain access (subject to a charge) to a database that contains harmonised time series of National Structure of Earnings Statistics. Organisations, such as employee or employer organisations, sometimes supplement their own earnings data by a more comprehensive view granted by the SES. Typically their needs relate to the distribution of earnings in Finland.  

The aforementioned users have been keen to utilize the SES data throughout the 2000s. Statistics Finland has not conducted surveys directly linking user satisfaction and the SES. However, according to surveys users hold Statistics Finland in high regard, and there has not been major nor minor issues regarding the quality of the SES.

The biggest problem that Statistics Finland and the users grapple with is the classification of occupations. Occasionally the classification defies the common sense applied by the users (certain idiosyncrasies of Finnish occupations) and leads to misguided presumptions. Statistics Finland, however acknowledges this, and tries to ameliorate the pain.

Also, the concept total earnings seems from time to time to be all too encompassing. Some users do not realise that is includes all the allowances and perks. On the other hand, bonuses and holiday pay, are assumed to be included (which they are, of course, not). However, according to our view, the use of total earnings is well reasoned, and this is again, problem related to communication with users, which Statistics Finland has duly acknowledged in its publications.

All the mandatory variables of the SES are considered to be used.  

Data supplied to Eurostat does not cover enterprises whose main activity belongs to the industries of agriculture, forestry and fishery, private households employing domestic staff or extraterritorial organizations and bodies. The data does not include conscripts. 

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See below

Please refer to the attached document Relative Standard Errors. 

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The survey frame in the national SES-data is drawn form the Business Registerdata and it refers to the middle of the reference year. In year 2014 the survey frame included 36 417 enterprises.

The base data for organised employers (captured by employer organisations) contain also earnings data from some enterprises that were not included or not synchronised in the original survey frame. Most of these respondents were either new or growing enterprises. These enterprises were considered as an under coverage of the frame if the number of employment captured from these employers met the level of the national survey frame, 5 employees. The data were added to the base data without any weighting, by using a coefficient of 1. In public sector the coverage was 100 percent so there was no need to do any adjustment for non-response.

Non-synchronisation between the data and the survey frame may influence the quality of the statistics through data estimation. The data covers also those local units in activities defined in the regulation that do not belong to enterprises included in the survey frame (activity exclusion).

In total individual National SES-data the average coefficient was 1.26. 

No specific measures for over coverage were conducted. The over coverage ratio was deemed insignificant.

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The basic data for the Structure of Earnings Statistics is obtained from different sources, the statistical reference month varies to some extent from October to December. However, as the main body of data hails from October, the measurement error hailing from inaccurate month is deemed to be negligible. Appling the data from various registers may also have some influence on their reliability. As synchronising of the data in the registers is accomplished using enterprise and personal ID keys, some employees remain unsynchronised due to data and timing differences.  

The validity of the production process and the representativeness of the reference period have been ensured by comparing the SES -data (the gross monthly earnings for the reference month plus periodic bonuses for the year) to annual taxable gross earnings for the same persons in administrative data. For example the annual taxable gross earnings for those in the same fulltime employment for the full year were 2,0 per cent lower compared to the calculated gross annual earnings based on SES. The reason for this is a consequence of reference period. Earnings in October are a bit higher compared to earlier calendar months.

Data captured by Finnish employer organisations covered 84 percent of all organised enterprises with over 100 employment relationships. Enterprises smaller than 100 employees but larger than 5 employees the coverage was substantially smaller, 22 percent. For unorganised enterprises (data collected by Statistics Finland) the coverage was about 80 percent of all enterprises in the survey (2 500 enterprises).

The estimation weights have been calculated as an inverse of the realised sampling probability. The influence of unit non-response errors is being reduced by using itemised sampling strata by 42 activities and 5 classes by the number of employees. In the year 2014 the average coefficient for non-response in the private sector was 1.42 and in total data 1.26.

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The quality of the national base data has been controlled during the whole data processing from the data capturing to publishing by branch-specific checking and validation rules. The validation has been mainly based on imputation of missing or conflicting variables. Observations not accepted by the national or Eurostat-validation process have been usually rejected. In general their share has been somewhat insignificant.

Because the production process of national Structure of Earnings data has many processing steps and the base data has been captured mainly by Finnish employer organisations the imputation rates generally cannot attained. However we may indicate that the rates would be modest, due the quality of the base data has been controlled during the data capturing and the production process.

Modelling is not used in SES 2014.

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The National SES of 2014 was first published in October 2015. The release was supplemented and made final by the section publication. This took place in April 2016. The first publication contained information regarding the occupation, gender and education. The second release added data on economic activity and region. The SES2014 for Eurostat was delivered in June 2016. 

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Crucial data processing dates were:

• The national survey frame for private sector enterprises was created by September 2014 and after that, the data capturing started for unorganised enterprises. Enquiry for local government sector began in October 2014.
• The branch-specific data based on enterprise surveys was captured and controlled by August 2015. Public sector data (local government sector and central government sector) was final by June 2015.
• The national Structure of Earnings data had been completed in April 2016, i.e. branch-specific survey data had been processed and harmonised into one single database.
• The data for senior management of private sector enterprises were created from administrative registers by end of May 2016.
• The national Structure of Earnings data had been completed by data from administrative registers (annual earnings, months employed, unpaid absence etc.) by the by end of May 2016.
• The data for a sub-sample of 315 187 employees was delivered to Eurostat in the end of June 2016.
• The quality evaluation report was supplied to Eurostat in the end of December 2016.

The first results of the national Structure of Earnings statistics were published nationally in November 2015 and second results in April 2016.

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The definitions are applied according the regulation.

Short note on the reference time: generally the data refer to the last quarter of 2014. Yet the reference period may slightly differ by sector and branch. In the service sector the data refer to October. Data for manual workers in manufacturing depict the situation in the whole last quarter and in the local government sector the data refer to October. Data for non-manual workers in manufacturing have been collected from December instead. 

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Comparability over time is sound. Differing from the SES2002, the SES2006 contained hourly earnings for teachers working for the local government and the local government sector wage and salary earners with reduced wages. In addition to these revisions also minor updates to production were made, namely regarding the method of calculating payments of shift work and adjustment for non-response.

SES2010 added to the coverage of employees for the first time data and earnings for air transport activities. SES2014 was produced akin to SES2010, however, the was a reduction of coverage regarding the shipping industry.  

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The following table presents comparison between Structure of Earnings and National Accounts by NACE section in 2014. The figures of the SES are generally higher than of SNA. One of the factor is SNA's wider coverage of entrerprises smaller than 5 employees, other factor relating this, is different population groups, eg SNA includes conscripts (sector O) whereas they could not be included in the SES. 

The gross annual earnings comparison between Structure of Earnings Statistics and National Accounts by NACE section in 2014, full and part time employees

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The data of the Structure of Earnings Statistics are published as a statistical release twice a year on Statistics Finland’s Internet page. In addition, tables in the StatFin online service are published from these statistics.

Online database can be found in Finnish at http://www.stat.fi/til/pra/tau.html

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Microdata are available for researchers throughout Statistics Finland Research Centre. Microdata are anonymised and protected. The data are subject to a charge. 

The data is only disseminated via Statistics Finland's web page.

Methodological descriptions, concepts, definitions and metadata are available at Statistics Finland’s web pages. These descriptions aim to be user friendly and are not all comprehensive. Thus in addition the department of Wages, salaries and labour costs in providing additional information when needed. 

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