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FI-00022 Statistics Finland

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Wage and salary indices describe the monthly development of the gross wages and salaries sum in different industries. Sums of wages and salaries refer to the gross totals of wages and salaries enterprises have paid.

Wage and salary indices exclude incentive stock options but include bonuses and other one-off reward items. The calculation is based on estimation of change. Calculation of the annual changes also takes into consideration enterprise openings and closures, as well as restructuring and change of activity.

The wage and salary indices are based on the Tax Administration's periodic tax return data and the Sales Inquiry of Statistics Finland .

Starting from 01/01/2019, the wage and salary indices are based on the Incomes Register data and the Sales Inquiry of Statistics Finland.

At the start of the year 2024 the Incomes Register based wages and salaries sum will be allocated according to the earnings period instead of the previous payment-based month. Thus, the wages and salaries sum is better allocated relative to the used labour input. The change will in future cause more index revisions than usual for the most recent month published.

Further information: https://stat.fi/en/statistics/documentation/ktps

The Standard Industrial Classification NACE rev. 2.0 is used.

Activities covered:
- Industry: sections B to E of NACE Rev. 2.
- Construction: section F of NACE Rev. 2.
- Wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles: section G of NACE Rev. 2.
- Services: sections H, I, J, L, M, N, R and S of NACE Rev. 2.
- Public sector: sections O to Q (excl. private sector) of NACE Rev. 2.
- Education: section P (excl. public sector) of NACE Rev. 2.
- Health and social work: section Q (excl. public sector) of NACE Rev. 2.

The sections of NACE Rev. 2. required in STS are disseminated to Eurostat.

Wage and salary indices describe the monthly development of the gross wages and salaries sum in different industries. Sums of wages and salaries refer to the gross totals of wages and salaries enterprises have paid.

Wage and salary indices exclude incentive stock options but include bonuses and other one-off reward items. The calculation is based on estimation of change. Calculation of the annual changes also takes into consideration enterprise openings and closures, as well as restructuring and change of activity.

The wage and salary indices are based on the Tax Administration's periodic tax return data and the Sales Inquiry of Statistics Finland .

Starting from 01/01/2019, the wage and salary indices are based on the Incomes Register data and the Sales Inquiry of Statistics Finland. Starting from January 2020, data obtained directly from the Incomes Register are used as source data. Previously, the Tax Administration supplied the data to Statistics Finland (http://stat.fi/til/ktps/ktps_2020-06-12_uut_001_en.html)

Administrative source: enterprise. Statistical survey: kind-of-activity unit for the (few) major multi-industrial enterprises.

The population of wage and salary indices is all employers that pay wages and salaries. Of enterprises practising business, those classified in Statistics Finland's Business Register under the industries to be examined are included in the calculation. The wages and salaries sum of enterprises serving a group is compiled into the group's industry. The most significant multi-industry enterprises have been divided into so-called kind-of-activity units to improve purity by industry. Business register is used for NACE information. Incomes Register contains comprehensive information on individuals' wages.

The frame is updated monthly and demographic changes, such as start-ups and the most important mergers and split offs, are included instantly. Closures are included as soon as they are noticed, at the latest in four months delay.

Geographical area covered: the whole country. The Autonomous Region of Åland belongs in the statistical phenomenon described. Activities outside the geographical area are not included.

Data is available from 1995. Some of the series published only nationally are produced only from 2010 onwards.

Base (reference) year: 2021

The data are provided as indices.

The reference period of wage and salary indices is month.

The production of the indices is based on the Statistics Act (280/2004), Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on European business statistics (EU) 2019/2152 and Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2020/1197.

The Statistics Act (280/04) is the general act for the National Statistical Service (NSS). It contains the principles for the data collection, processing, and dissemination of official statistics. The act defines the roles of statistical authorities (Statistics Finland, Customs, National Institute for  Health and Welfare, and Tike, Information Centre of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry) and other authorities producing statistics. The Statistics Finland Act (48/1992) states that Statistics Finland (SF) shall provide for the general development of official statistics in collaboration with other central government authorities.
The aim of the NSS is to produce official statistics, Official Statistics of Finland (OSF). European law (especially the Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on European statistics (EC) No 223/2009) applies to a large portion of OSF.

The Statistics Act requires that the primarily exploited sources for statistical purposes shall be the data accumulated in the administration of general government and the data produced as a consequence of the normal activities of employers, self-employed persons, corporations, and foundations. SF has the right to have access to these data under the Statistics Act. In addition, all public and private entities in Finland are obliged to provide SF with data on their finances, products and staff as necessary for the production of statistics. The right of SF to collect data by virtue of the obligation does not extend, however, to data that are kept confidential for reasons of international relationships, public safety, the interest of national defence, or the safety of the state. Before any data collection based on the obligation, the statistical authority must consult the respondents or their representatives about the contents, timing, collection methods, duration of storing of the data as well as about costs. Besides those data obtained directly from administrative sources data from natural persons are always collected on voluntary basis by using interviewing or mail and web surveys. In addition, the interviewees must be informed in advance in a written form.
The Statistics Act stipulates that a data provider who willfully fails to provide the obligatory data or willfully provides false data shall be sentenced to a fine. Nevertheless, SF is allowed to refrain from bringing charges if the violation is regarded as minor, but in practice charges have not been filed.

According to the Statistics Act, data obtained by four statistical authorities may be released to other parties either if permitted by legal provisions explicitly concerning the NSS, or upon express consent of the subject of the data. As far as statistical authorities are concerned they are allowed to transmit confidential data with identifiers to each other if it is deemed necessary for the production of statistics. The same applies to the European Statistical System authorities (ESS Authorities). Co-ordination among data-producing agencies is normal practice at both specialist and top level.

Several legal acts guarantee that individual data should be kept confidential.
According to the Act on the Openness of Government Activities (621/1999) data collected for statistical purposes are confidential. The rule is not applied to the publicity of data describing the activities of central and local government authorities and production of public services or to certain data in the Register of Enterprises and Establishments.
Under the Statistics Act, statistics shall be compiled so that the respondents whom they concern are not directly or indirectly identifiable. Violation of the secrecy obligation is punishable under the Penal Code. At the EU level, similar assurances are included in Council Regulation (EC) No 223/2009.
Details regarding the protection of information on private individuals are laid down in the Finnish Personal Data Act (523/1999).
The Statistics Act obliges statistics-producing authorities to inform respondents in writing or in other appropriate manner about the intended use of the data, the procedures to be used in producing the statistics, the principles governing whether the provision of data is obligatory or voluntary, the rights of the respondents, the arrangements for protecting the data, and the duration the data will be stored.
The Statistics Act allows a statistical authority to grant access to confidential data for use in scientific research or statistical surveys if statistical units cannot be identified directly from them. The right to use data may be given in compliance with a well-defined process including a written application.
SF has implemented procedures to prevent disclosure of any individual data provider. It has published guidelines on how to apply the Statistics Act and the Personal Data Act, as well as guidelines on the protection of tabulated data on enterprises and individual persons. A section on data protection is included in the SF publication Quality Guidelines for Official Statistics. Micro data concerning individual persons released for scientific research are first edited to remove variables that would make it possible to directly identify individual persons such as name, address or personal identification number. Similar procedures are used with respect to sensitive information about units other than individual persons.

The data is confidential as it is flagged when sent to Eurostat.

A release schedule for the coming year, specifying precise dates of release, is published in the Release Calendar (https://stat.fi/en/statistics/ktps#calendar) in December by Statistics Finland.

The release dates are available on the Internet (https://stat.fi/en/future-releases).

The results are released simultaneously to all interested parties on predefined days on the home page of the Wage and salary indices https://stat.fi/en/statistics/ktps.
No one has prior access to the statistics before their general release. There is no internal governmental access to data before their release to the public. No ministerial commentary is attached to released data.

Series are transmitted to Eurostat at the latest 35 days after the end of the reference period. Series are transmitted to Eurostat during the same day they are published in Finland. The transmission is done via STADIUM by using GESMES/TS coding system.

The results from the Finnish wage and salary indices are published monthly.

A monthly publication is made available to the media and the public free of charge. The indices are published monthly on the Internet (https://stat.fi/en/statistics/ktps).

The quality description of the statistics, as well as concepts and definitions, are available on the homepage of the Wage and salary indices.

Quarterly publication is made available to the media and the public free of charge. The indices are published on the Internet (https://stat.fi/tilasto/ktps#pastPublications).

The Wage and salary indices is updated monthly in the StatFin-databank of Statistics Finland.

Indices start from the year 1995 (Some of the series published only nationally are produced only from 2010 onwards.) and include:
- Year-on-year change, %
- Original series, Seasonally adjusted, Trend series
of sections B-S of NACE.

Microdata is not publicly available.

Statistics Finland's researcher services offer unit-level data, i.e. micro data, for scientific studies and statistical surveys. The conditions and rules with respect to data access can be found on the home page http://stat.fi/tup/mikroaineistot/index_en.html .

Data is sent monthly to Eurostat.

Dissemination on request
Tailored tables and data files are provided for a fee.

The documentation on methodology and sources used in preparing statistics is available on the Internet (https://stat.fi/en/statistics/documentation/ktps.

Advance notice of major changes in methodology, source data, and statistical techniques.
Advance notice is given to the public when major changes are introduced in methodology, sources, and statistical techniques. Information on revisions in statistics. In the case of major changes, briefings for the main users and press will be organised.

The documentation on quality management is available on the Internet (https://stat.fi/en/statistics/documentation/ktps).

Monthly follow-up of revisions. Available for public in each publication https://stat.fi/en/statistics/ktps#pastPublications.

Quality policy
The main lines of quality management at SF are defined in the handbook Quality Guidelines for Official Statistics. There is also a group for the management of quality and processes at SF. The group reports to the DG. Statistical Methods unit takes care of methodology for quality assurance e.g. in sampling and editing-imputation process.
SF develops its activities according to the Total Quality Management principles. It has been influenced by, among other things, the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) excellence model, the United Nations’ Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics and Handbook of Statistical Organization, as well as the European Statistics Code of Practice. The quality criteria of OSF are harmonised with the respective criteria of the European Statistical System.

Impartiality of statistics
Section 11 of the Finnish Statistics Act contains the requirement that statistics should be as reliable as possible, give a truthful picture, and make use, if possible, of uniform concepts, definitions, and classifications, as well as be timely. Similar provisions can be found in EU legislation. The Statistics Act, the Statistics Finland Act, and the Council of State Decree on Statistics Finland (1063/2002) and several other legal provisions support SF’s professional independence:
• Section 3 of the Statistics Finland Act decrees that the internal organisation of SF is defined in internal Rules of Procedure which are decided by SF’s Director General (DG);
• Section 1 of the Council of State Decree on SF gives the DG the right to manage the activities and finances of SF;
• Section 5 of the Council of State Decree lays down that the DG shall be appointed by the Council of State for a fixed term. The nomination is made after open competition. The Decree also gives the DG the right to appoint the staff of SF, including directors of the departments as well as other staff members unless the decision-power has been delegated in the Rules of Procedure to some other official of SF;
• Section 10 of the Statistics Act provides that data processing shall take place in accordance with good statistical practice and the international recommendations and procedures generally applied in the field of statistics.

Selection of sources, methodology, and modes of dissemination
The selection of sources, methodology and modes of dissemination of SF statistics are decided by SF alone. According to the Statistics Act, the choice of data sources, statistical techniques, and methods of dissemination should be based on statistical considerations (Sections 3, 10, 11, and 12). There are also responsibilities regarding cost-efficiency and the response burden of data collections (Section 4).

Guidelines for staff behavior
On the basis of international recommendations SF has confirmed its own Guidelines on Professional Ethics. All employees are given a copy of this handbook.
An internal ethical board meets regularly and reports on its decisions and discussions on the intranet open to all staff of SF.

The top management of SF has made several self-assessments in line with the EFQM model. There have also been external audits by  e.g. the EU and IMF experts. Processes are in place to monitor the quality of the statistical process and the processes of individual statistics. Quality considerations are an integral part of the planning and evaluation of the statistical programme.
The process owner of statistical production and it’s supporting group monitor the quality and steer the standardisation of work processes.
Statistics Finland has an internal quality audit system. The main objectives are to evaluate the ways of working, methods and techniques. An audit is carried out by an audit team of experts who are external in the sense that they do not have any direct connection with the production process in question. About 8 audits are carried out yearly in Statistics Finland.

The information is used for the follow-up and analysis of the development of the business statistics in Eurostat, in the European Central Bank, in some international organizations and Finland's public administration and area developing. The economic life and the research institutions use information to the evaluation of the market's and the competitors' development.

Co-operation between SF and important users with regard to the relevance of statistics and the users’ needs consists of an extensive feedback system and co-operative working groups with the main users, such as users of national accounts. There are regular meetings of SF directors and experts with the users, even at the senior management level. Users are usually also invited to participate in discussions concerning the establishment of new statistics or revisions of existing ones.
In addition, there are specific feedback systems for receiving the users’ opinions at SF. These systems consist of an anonymous feedback channel on the web, media monitoring, surveys among different user groups for the evaluation SF’s performance, user surveys (every second year), and a system for collecting and disseminating information that is strategically important for SF. Specific statistical products conduct their own user surveys and keep in regular contact with their main interest groups.

All the required series are produced and STS requirements fulfilled.

Accuracy is good due to total data in use. Due to supplementations the data updates for over twelve months. However the most notable changes affect the five most recent moths.

Not applicable because census-like data is used.

The first estimate is compiled with a response rate of 90 percent measured by the sum of wages and salaries. The final indicator is compiled with a response rate of 100 percent.

The first publication is 35 days after the end of the reference month.
Reporting units should report payments to the Incomes Register within five days of the payment date. Statistics Finland receives the data approximately one month after the end of the reference month.

Usually data is delivered on time but exceptionally data delivery (M3/2019) was late because the administrative source was not accessible as normal (https://stat.fi/en/statistics/documentation/ktps#Accuracy,%20reliability%20and%20timeliness).  

European definitions are used and therefore the results are internationally comparable. The whole national territory is equally covered.

Comparable data is available from 1995. Some of the series published only nationally are produced only from 2010 onwards.

Comparisons are made quarterly to number of employed persons of the Labour Force Survey and to the Index of wage and salary earnings. Comparisons are also made with the annual data from the Business Register on less frequent basis.

Sources of differences between statistics are as follows:

Separate purposes of use of statistics
The differences of the statistics are caused by the length of their description period, by the publication delay and scope of the data content. For STS statistics the description period and publication delay are shorter and their data content smaller than of Business register and of Structural Business Statistics. The annual statistics represent a cross section on the entrepreneurship of the year in question. In STS statistics, the information has been temporally made comparable for company restructuring and for example for branch transfers in order for the indicators to represent the economic development of each industry at the time.
The annual statistics are completed on about one year’s delay. The advance figures are completed on the delay of about half a year.

Calendar year vs. the accounting period
The wages and salaries information of the Business Register and Financial Statements Statistics is in accordance with the profit and loss account. The wages and salaries information in these statistics contain figures from the accounting periods, which do not always correspond to the calendar year. While compiling the Wage and Salary Indices the wages and salaries are instead set on each calendar month irrespective of the accounting period. In the annual statistics accounting periods are fixed to the year where the period ends.

Comparability of concepts
The personnel costs of the Financial Statements Statistics is a wider concept than the wages and salaries under the withhold tax. In the Financial Statements Statistics, the personnel costs cover the salaries and rewards, pension costs and other indirect employee costs. Instead the gross definite salaries paid by the enterprise correspond to the concept of Wage and Salary Indices in all the statistics. The same salary concept is used in the Business Register.

Comparability of the population
The Wage and Salary Indices contain the salaries paid by the general government and by the non-profit institutions. The annual statistics of the Business Register do not include the salaries paid by the general government but they are published separately.
All the enterprises which have produced the financial statement are included in the Financial Statements Statistics irrespective of the size. Enterprises are contained in the Business Register figures if they have operated during the statistical year for more than half a year and their turnover is at least 9 821 e per year (during the year 2009) or they employ ( in person years measuring) more than 0,5 persons. All the employers who pay salaries are included in the Wage and Salary Indices.

The non-seasonally adjusted aggregates are always consistent with their sub-aggregates.

Total costs of survey data productions: 570¹ person-hours.

Total burden on respondents: 20¹ person-hours.

¹on year 2009

Indices are revised according to changes in the data and errors are corrected. More detailed explanation can be found here https://www.stat.fi/org/principles/publication-principles-for-statistics/practices-when-changes-are-made-to-statistical-data.

Because the Incomes Register data supplements also after the due date, the data is repeatedly updated for over a year.

Revised figures are published monthly according to the changes in data, but not announced as such. Methodological changes, errors in the newest release and the outstandingly significant revisions are announced at the time of change. Errors are corrected immediately. An annual overhaul of seasonal adjustment models is carried out.

Monthly follow-up of revisions. Available for public in the latest publication https://stat.fi/en/statistics/ktps#pastPublications.

No benchmarking.

Administrative source (Incomes Register, which is basically a census) complemented by a statistical survey of the few of the largest multi-industrial enterprises in each industry (cut-off sample).

Imputation is used for part of the missing data. The unit non response is corrected with one of the five simple rules, and imputed values are included into calculations only when the imputation can be considered as reliable.

Monthly, collected data refer to full reference month.

A web questionnaire is used to collect the survey data. E-mail reminders are sent twice and thereafter the remaining non respondents are contacted by phone.

Validation level 0:
Incomes Register data is checked when it arrives before any further actions. Plausibility checks are made for instance on the number of observations and range of variable values.

Validation level 1:
Automatic corrections are made to the false or defective observations of the Incomes Register data. Also some critically flawed observations are removed, double declarations are combined, the negative values of wages and salaries are deleted etc. Some partial non response is handled by imputation using the auxiliary variables on the data. Manual examination concentrate mainly on the outlier observations.

Validation level 2-3:
The sums of data variables (main and auxiliary) of the most recent period are compared with those of previous versions. Revisions are analysed on micro and macro level. Yearly growth figures are compared with Wage and Salary figures of other domains. Also the special characteristic of each industry is taken into account while validating the data. Checks are made to Business Register data on micro level.

Transmission to Eurostat:
EWA (EDAMIS Web Application) is used for data transmission to Eurostat.

Type of index
The index is calculated using a panel of enterprise level data on of wages and salaries. The wages and salaries during the reference month is compared with the wages and salaries during the same month previous year and the year-on-year percentage change is calculated. The change is then used to calculate the index number of the latest reference month. This index number is corrected by the index of recently established enterprises and by the index of enterprises that have closed.
For the base year the index is calculated directly from the sum of wages and salaries. (Possible because by time of the base year change, the data is already fully accumulated for the year in question.)

Data editing
The combined micro level data, which includes both Incomes Register and survey observations, is studied in detail for the most influential yearly changes in wages and salaries. The erroneous figures are corrected. At this point, many of the mergers and split offs are detected. Most of the information of the mergers, split offs etc. come from administrative sources and are treated automatically. If detected in microlevel checking treatment is semiautomatic and the information have to be entered in the database manually Also the most important closures and start-ups are ensured. A lot of time and effort is spent on this stage.

Estimates for non-response
Imputations are made by five simple methods for the latest and the second latest month. Only the most reliable values are taken into account.

Weighting
Since indices are based on total data, the compilation process does not include weighting. Whereas, in the panel technique, an enterprise gets the weight of its share of the sum of wages and salaries in the panel for a given month. This is a fixed base year index.

Gross, working day adjusted, seasonally adjusted and trend series are produced with TRAMO/SEATS-method. The seasonal adjustment is performed on partially overlapping sub-periods, where structural breaks in seasonality patterns are detected. The overlapping period is set to twelve months in order to avoid breaks in the final seasonally adjusted series.

- Starting from the January 2015 data, a new software J-Demetra+ is used.
- The automated approach is used for those series for which it performs well. Others are modeled manually.
- Partial concurrent adjustment is applied.
- National calendar is in use.

Information about the seasonal adjustment policies in Statistics Finland is available here: https://www.stat.fi/en/statistics/documentation/ktps#Methods

The seasonal adjustment is performed on partially overlapping sub-periods, where structural breaks in seasonality patterns are detected. The overlapping period is set to twelve months in order to avoid breaks in the final seasonally adjusted series.

None.