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National reference metadata

Albania

Reference metadata describe statistical concepts and methodologies used for the collection and generation of data. They provide information on data quality and, since they are strongly content-oriented, assist users in interpreting the data. Reference metadata, unlike structural metadata, can be decoupled from the data.

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Structure of earnings survey 2018 (earn_ses2018)

National Reference Metadata in ESS Standard for Quality Reports Structure (ESQRS)

Compiling agency: INSTAT, Institute of Statistics

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The Structure of Earnings Survey (SES) is a 4-yearly survey which provides EU-wide harmonised structural data on gross earnings, hours paid and annual days of paid holiday leave, which are collected every four years under Council Regulation (EC) No 530/1999 concerning structural statistics on earnings and on labour costs, and Commission Regulation (EC) No 1738/2005 amending Regulation (EC) No 1916/2000 as regards the definition and transmission of information on the structure of earnings.

The SES 2018 provides detailed information on relationships between the level of hourly, monthly and annual remuneration, personal characteristics of employees (sex, age, occupation, length of service, highest educational level attained, etc.) and their employer (economic activity, size and economic control of the enterprise).

Regional data is available on NUTS1 level.

Not Applicable

Employees are all persons who have a direct employment contract with the enterprise or local unit and receive remuneration, irrespective of the type of work performed, the number of hours worked (full or part-time), and the duration of the contract (fixed or indefinite).

Average annual gross earnings also cover all 'non-standard payments', i.e. payments not occurring in each pay period, such as 13th or 14th-month payments, holiday bonuses, quarterly or annual company bonuses, and annual payments in kind.

Average monthly gross earnings in the reference month cover remuneration in cash paid before any tax deductions and social security contributions payable by wage earners and retained by the employer, and are restricted to gross earnings which are paid in each pay period during the reference month.

Average hourly gross earnings are defined as gross earnings in the reference month divided by the number of hours paid during the same period.

The number of hours paid includes all normal and overtime hours worked and remunerated by the employer during the reference month. Hours not worked but nevertheless paid are counted as 'paid hours' (e.g. for annual leave, public holidays, paid sick leave, paid vocational training, paid special leave, etc.).

The statistical unit is the enterprise and the employees working within the selected unit.

The population of employees covered in the SES are those who received remuneration for the reference month (October), as requested by the  Regulation, in the enterprises and institutions belonging to the Private and Public sectors with at least 10 employees in the NACE Rev. 2 sections B to S excluding O.

Data cover the entire country and aggregate estimates are disseminated at national level and NUTS 1 level.

Not Applicable

Overall, the data is checked to identify any significant changes within the dataset. Where changes occur, the survey data is checked with alternative sources, if any. When there is no information from alternative sources, INSTAT corrects or confirms the data using emails or by calling the respondents. Measures taken by INSTAT for SES, to increase response rates or to reduce the impact of nonresponse by imputing them are as follow:

  • Data are collected directly from the enterprise.
  • The enumerator's staff is trained on how to handle difficult respondents.
  • Due to the lack of an address system, it is often difficult for enumerators to find enterprise. For this reason, INSTAT staff, via email addresses or phone numbers, contacts the person responsible for completing the survey and receives more information on the location as well as the date and time of the meeting.
  • Priority is given to larger businesses. When these enterprises refuse to respond to the interviewer, an official request, in particular, is directed for the president of enterprises and signed by INSTAT director-general; it is also done for enterprises that require only this way to give the information.
  • A formal request is also sent to other companies that agree to respond only if the information is formally requested.
  • The enterprises are invited to contact the Statistical Office in case of questions and always qualified staffs are available to answer the enterprise's calls.
  • In order to detect outliers and other quality problems, several aggregated checks were integrated into different data collection tools.

More complicated inconsistency problems were solved internally or by contacting the local unit on a bilateral basis.

Not Applicable

The process of data compilation is done through two procedures:

Quality of data

There are applied some rules for analyzing the quality of data:

-           Mathematic control of the questionnaire · Logic control of the questionnaire’s data

-          Comparison of data with administrative register

-          Analyze huge deviations from average.

 Treatment of non-response

Are considered as all cases of:

      - Non-contact

      - Full refuse

      - Partial refuses (for different indicators).

The treatment of non-response is done using direct methods or their combinations such as:

- Data from the administrative register;

- Data from enterprises that have similar conditions are used.

As a source of data for SES is the survey on enterprises. The frame population for SES 2018 contains 124,186 unique enterprises from the Business register that have local unit’s information in it with the respective geographical information. The stratification criteria were the economic activity, the number of employed, and the region of the local unit.

The SES 2018 was conducted based on a two-stage sampling approach. In the first stage, a stratified random sample of local units was drawn. The sample size selected is 3,381 enterprises.

The questionnaire, the explanation, and a list of local units for which the survey needed to be filled were sent to the head offices of the selected local units. In the second stage, the local unit had to select a number of employees according to the instructions in the explanation. 

With regard to the size of the enterprise, Albania chose to exclude small enterprises with fewer than ten employees. We also excluded the NACE section O in our sample. This means that the Albanian datasets only include the local units covered by the Regulation.

Distribution of sampled enterprises based on “number of employed" size classes is given as follows:

Total number of employed

Proportion

10 - 49 employed

50%

50 - 249 employed

25%

250 - 499 employed

22%

500 - 999 employed

20%

1000+ employed

13%

Not Applicable

The time lag between the delivery date and the end of the reference period is approximately 680 days (T+680). Publication takes place strictly in accordance with published release dates for Labour Market Statistics  in the INSTAT webpage.

The SES 2018 complies with the standard set up on the Council Regulation (EC) No 530/1999 concerning structural statistics on earnings and on labour costs and with the definitions of variables adopted in the Commission Regulation 1737/2005. The sampling unit in the first stage is the enterprises, but the register information allows to localize the employee in the region in which he/she is employed. 

Not applicable. SES is conducted for the first time in INSTAT.