Czech Statistical Office

Industrial, Construction and Energy Statistics Department
Trade, Transport, Services, Tourism and Enviroment Statistics Unit

Český statistický úřad
Na padesátém 81
100 82 Praha 10

Number of employees and self-employed persons

Hours worked by employees

Gross wages and salaries

The three above mentioned indicators are primarily based on specific quarterly business survey.

NACE Rev. 2.

Population of enterprises belong to NACE Rev. 2 Sections B to N regardless the size class. The data cover institutional sectors of non-financial corporations and household firms.

Number of employees and self-employed persons: The total number of persons who work in the observation unit i.e. number of employees (incl. part-time workers converted into full time equivalents but excl. apprentices), working proprietors and unpaid family workers for whom work for the unit is their main activity.

Hours worked by employees: The aggregate number of hours actually worked by the persons employed (as defined above) for the output of the observation unit during the reference period.

Gross wages and salaries: The total sum of renumeration payable to all employees (excl. apprentices) in return for work done during the reference period. Other personnel cost are not included.

Reporting and observation unit is enterprise as identified by national business register.

Unit classified in NACE B-N regardless the size class (for the national outputs the population is defined as NACE B-N). The population is defined upon the national business register and is continuously updated (incl. demographic changes).

Statistical population includes:

Czech Republic

All activities on the territory of the Czech Republic are covered including activities of local units (branches) which do not constitute a separate legal entity and which are dependent on foreign enterprises. Excluded are activities of foreign enterprises carried out by their personnel (non-residents of the Czech Republic) on the territory of the Czech Republic (e.g. activities of sales representatives, delivery personnel, repair and maintenance teams). As regards the foreign activities of the enterprises registered in the Czech Republic, the activities of branches which do not constitute a separate legal entity abroad are excluded. Included are, however, activities of the Czech enterprises performed via their employees - Czech residents.

Length of time series: Year 2000 - Presence. Except Services and Trade which publish Hours worked and Gross wages and salaries from 2010 onwards. The infomation is valid for all aggregates required by EBS-Regulation.

2021=100

Index (%)

Quarter.

- Act No. 89/1995 Coll. on the state statistical service of June 15, 1995, as amended (does not refer to any specific indicator).

- Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 November 2019 on European business statistics.

The referred indicators on the quarterly frequency are not actively shared with international organizations. Data on number of employees (cut-off 20+) for Industry and Construction represents the only infomation available on the monthly basis. It is shared with the IMF. There is not survey on number of employees for Services and Trade.

The confidentiality policy is based on:
1. The State Statistical Service Act No. 89/1995,
2. Law on protection of personal data (§ 16 Secrecy and Confidential Statistical Data Protection)
3. The internal Directive of the Czech Statistical Office (No. 3/2015) referring to the treatment of confidential data. The Directive itself is seen as confidential.

Data are only published down to an activity level at which they are not confidential. Data allowing direct or indirect identification of individual enterprise can only be published under written permission of all related subjects. The parameters for primary confidential data determination are confidential.

For each year the Catalogue of Products is published at the end of the preceding year.  The data are regularly published in Time series, which covers number of employees, number of persons employed and average monthly wage per person. The data according to the EBS-Regulation (including hours worked) are tramsmitted to Eurostat on the same day. The deadline is 65 days after the end of the reference period.

Release calendar is available at the CZSO website. It does not contain information about hours worked as the indicator is not included in the national outputs.

All the standard publication tables are released at the same time for all users. Requests for data that are not included in the standard tables are considered individually, taking into acount all the aspects of quality.

Data are disseminated quarterly by Czech Statistical Office and they are sent to Eurostat in same frequency.

Data on the number of persons emplyed and hours worked are not published in the form of news releases.

Information on gross wages and salaries are published in the form of news releases.

No standard publications, see other dissemination formats.

Selected tables are available in the CZSO Public Database (VDB).

According to the national legislation the access to the microdata is allowed for scientific purposes only. Each request is decided on individual basis by the relevant expert group.

Time series are sent to Eurostat.

Important aspects and procedures of quality management within statistical production process as well as methodology are documented in the so-called technical projects, event. instructions for surveyors that are available for every statistics produced.

Technical projects in general contain description of the primary input data, data sources, definition of population, sampling procedure, processing technology, requirements for data transfer, control relations and checks, automatic corrections, derived indicators, definition of organization responsibilities, description of controls and relations, methodology of imputations, definition of outputs, description of input, source and user databases, backups, schedules of project and program preparation, schedules of preliminary and final processing, etc. In the CZSO there is a process of technical project preparation that is coordinated by the Department for Methodology of Performing Statistical Processing. For these purposes every year the so-called Schedule of technical preparation of statistical surveys is discussed in the advisory bodies of the President, where activities, terms and responsible units are specified.

The documentation mentioned above is of internal nature and therefore is not publicly available. General public can access methodological notes attached to individual outputs.

The whole process of data production is driven by internal documentation (Technical project and the Statistica Metadata System) to which all interested parties have an access (see also the point 11.1).

The key components of the quality assurance are the following:
1. Strategic documents of the CZSO: Mission, Vision and Priorities of the CZSO, Quality commitment, Priority tasks defined for each year.
2. Irregular methodological audits represents an important tool in quality control. Audits are usually carried out by expert group comprising of internal and external experts (NA experts, representatives of universities, ministries etc.).
3. Important aspects and procedures of quality management within statistical production process are documented in by internal Statistical metadata system, including so-called Technical projects, event. by instructions for surveyors that are available for every statistics produced.

Assessment of the quality uses the following components:
1. Standard STS compliance assessments carried out by Eurostat. This assessment is used internally as well.
2. The methdological audit (see also Quality assurance) includes inter alia different quality analysis, e.g. benchmark analysys, response analysis, in case od leading indicators, their abilty to predict the changes in the economy.
3. Regular response rate measurement.
4. Regular confrontation of estimates with later available administrative data or comparable data acquired or estimated from statistics with different periodicity.

The following users can be identified:
1. External users:
1.1 Eurostat
1.2 Ministry of Industry and Trade, Czech National Bank, other governmental institutions, other international organizations
1.3 Employers' associations, trade unions, media, students, wide public
2. Internal users: Quarterly National Accounts Department

The CZSO primarily fulfill its commitments towards the European Commission, which represents the high priority user. However, depending on the capacity available the CZSO treats all the users equally.

No users satisfaction surveys are carried out exclusively for STS indicators on the national level. However, CZSO is constantly in contact with different groups of users, e.g. ministries, Czech National Bank, different associations, internal users etc.

The Czech Republic provides Eurostat with all data required by the EBS Regulation.

Overall assessment:
- Sampling error is not systematically mesured.
- Response rate is reasonable.
- The main problem is the lack of information related to the smallest units in the population, what results also in the high misclassification.

Sampling error is not regularly measured.

The main problems related to non-sampling errors are the following:
1. Administrative data available for the smallest units in the frame (i.e. natural persons and legal persons without employees, which are not VAT payers) are outdated at the moment when the sample is drawn (data refers to R-1 rather than R). No other data source for activity assessment is available.
2. Relatively high degree of misclassification particularly of small units (natural persons and legal persons without employees, which are not VAT payers). The details are available in the SBS Quality report.
3. Non-response. However, it is not regarded as serious problem.
4. Organisational changes (mergers, splits, births and deaths) in reporting units and in the population as a whole during the year.  The BR is relatively slow, what increases an importance of feedback from infraannual surveys.

Data are released simultaneously to all interested parties by issuing the publication tables 65 days after the end of the reference quarter. Exact days (see the Release Calendar) take into account the distribution of working days in particular period.

The data are always published at the day announced by the Release Calendar. The CZSO does not register any deviation from this practice.

There are a few specifities of the Czech labour market that could lead to minor discrepancies when the comparability of data between countries is concerned, namely:
1. Quite a high number of own-account workers compared to the whole population of the Czech Republic.
2. Quite a high number of people working as an employee and partly as own-account worker.
3. The quality of the respective indicators are influenced by the shortage of data. Our estimates are based particularly on the administrative data (they are available quarterly, but only for emploeyees) and LFS data (estimation of y-o-y development).

The relevant time series are available from the first quarter of 2000, they are comparable over time.

As basically all labour market data surveyed among businesses are based on the same administratrive sources and the same estimation methods, methodological coherence especially between quarterly (STS) and annual (SBS) outputs is secured. The regular coherence checks are taken for granted.

There are no problems regarding internal consistence of the time series in question.

Avarage quarterly number of employees and quarterly wages are surveyed quarterly. They are a part of the questionnaire Práce 2-04. We do not follow cost of individual indicators.

Data revisions follow the Revision Policy of the CZSO, which represent one of the key documents of the office. It is accessible via CZSO website in both Czech and English. Calendar of standard revisions is being prepared together with the release calendar.

The same revision policy is applied to STS data released nationally and transmitted to Eurostat.

We distinguish regular/planned and irregular/unplanned revisions. The regular revisions are carried out every quarter, irregular revision are undertaken in case of unpredictable significant events (e.g. a significant respondent corrected data, correction/update of administrative data etc.).

Sources: Statistical survey (Práce 2-04) and administrative data

1) Type of source: Statistical survey (Práce 2-04)

Frame on which the source is based: Business Register (RES)

Sample or census: Stratified sample.

Criteria for stratification: Stratified sample with exhaustive strata. Number of employees, activity (NACE 2-digit level).

Only enterprises with 1 and more employees are covered by the quarterly survey. Strata with 100 and more employees are exhaustive. The questionnaire is completed by the sample of 15 812 units. From survey we use data only for units with more than 10 employees.

Frequency of updating the sample: The sample is updated quarterly.

2) Type of source: administrative data

Besides the data acquired and estimated through the Práce 2-04 survey, SBS survey and administrative data on the number of insurance policy holders and the basis of social security insurance assessment are used for the estimation of the indicators in question.

1. Surveyed data are collected quarterly.
2. Administrative data are available 2 months after the end of reference period.

Questionnaires used in the survey: Prace 2-04 (quarterly)

Data collection media: Electronic questionnaire, web questionnaire, printed questionnaire.

Non-response treatment: Phone, email or postal reminders.

The electronic form of questionnaire contains built-in logical controls that draw respondent's attention to possible errors. Moreover, after receiving, data collected via electronic form of the questionnaire are further validated by statisticians.
Data obtained via the postal form of the questionnaire are entered to the database using specific software with built-in logical controls. When the software indicates a possible error, respective statistician entering data to the database contacts the respondent with the aim to correct/validate data.

1. Number of employees and gross wages and salaries for enterprises with 1 and more employees are estimated using data collected via quarterly surveys and available administrative data (see also source data).  
2. Units in the surveyed part of the population (units with 1 and more employees) are divided into stratas.
3. Data for each individual nonresponse unit and unit not included in the sample and belonging to the surveyed part of the population are estimated.
4. If a unit submitted the questionnaire/questionnaires for the same quarter of the last year, the number of employees and gross wages are estimated using the submitted data and average y-o-y development of the respective variables in the stratum in which the unit in question belongs.
5.  If a unit submitted only the questionnaire/questionnaires for the last quarter, the number of employees and gross wages are estimated using the submitted data and average q-o-q development of the respective variables in the stratum in which the unit in question belongs.
6.  Number of employees and gross wages and salaries for the non-surveyed part of the population as well as the hours worked and the number of own-account workers (working proprietors and unpaid family workers for whom work for the unit is their main activity)  for all the units in the pupulation are estimated using avaliable administrative data, the latest SBS data and development of LFS data. 

Seasonal and working day adjustment is performed on the following series using JDemetra+ software (TRAMO-SEATS method):

NACE Sections: B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, L, M_STS, N

For details on seasonal and working day adjustment please see the annexes, which refers to the situation as of 2023.

Not available.