Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia

Labour market statistics division         

Registered employment, earnings and labour costs statistics unit

5 Milana Rakića, Belgrade

From 2018, data on index of Hours worked by employees are derived from administrative sources.

The source of data is the records of the Tax Administration, which is based on the data collected through the electronic form of Individual tax return on accrued taxes and contributions (PPP-PD form).

Classification of Activities (2010), which was adopted by the Government, based on the Law on Classification of Activities (“Official Gazette of RS”, No. 104/09), on the basis of regulation as of 29 July 2009 (“Official Gazette of RS”, No. 54/10). This classification is comparable with the classification of activities of the European Union (NACE Rev. 2).

Activity coverage: All sections required under the provisions of EBS) Regulation (EU) 2019/2152: industry, construction, retail trade and other services are covered.

Size coverage: All size classes.

Index of Hours worked by employees is calculated on the basis of data on hours worked by employees in the month. Hours worked by employees include: hours worked by employees during normal periods of work, periods of paid overtime, short rest periods at the place of work like tea or coffee breaks.

Not included: hours paid but not worked (annual leave, holidays, sick leave up to 30 days paid by the employer, the daily breaks for breakfast/lunch, free days in case of marriage or birth of a child, death or serious illness of a member of the immediate family, Serbian family religious feast, labour disputes as well as in other cases stipulated by the general act and the employment contract).

The statistical unit is any accrued type of income that has the character of earnings and which is reported by a legal entity or physical person through the PPP-PD form, regardless whether that income relates to employees with indefinite or fixed-term employment contract or employees in temporary or occasional employment.

All business entities from the Statistical Business Register (SBR) that submitted an electronically filled-in tax return form (PPP-PD form) with accrued salaries and wages to the Tax Administration are included in the survey.

Only total actual hours are included.

Not included:

• hours which are paid but not worked (paid annual holidays, public holidays, sick leave, accidents, strikes, lock-outs or slack time);
• time spent for meal breaks;
• time spent commuting between home and place of work.

Republic of Serbia. Starting from 1999 the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia has not at disposal and may not provide available certain data relative to AP Kosovo and Metohija and therefore these data are not included in the coverage for the Republic of Serbia (total).

Activities outside the geographical coverage are not included.

Data are available since the 1st quarter of 2000. For the whole period, data are classified by CA 2010, which corresponds to the NACE Rev. 2. For the period 2000-2010 data were estimated by activities.

2021=100

Data are transmitted to Eurostat as a base indices (2021 = 100)

The STS time series on hours worked by employees are not being published nationally.

Quarter

National legislation

- Official Statistics Law

- Resolution on the Programme of official statistics

- Regulation on the Plan of official statistics for the current year

* The above documents are available at SORS website: http://www.stat.gov.rs/en-US/o-nama/dokumenti

 EU Legislation:

- The European Parliament and Council adopted the European Business Statistics (EBS) Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 on 27 November 2019, followed by the Commission Implementing Regulation 2020/1197 laying down technical specifications and arrangements pursuant to the mentioned EBS Regulation (General Implementing Act).

- Regulation (EC) 1893/2006 establishing the statistical classification of economic activities NACE Rev. 2

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

At the international level data are delivered only to Eurostat.

Data confidentiality is stipulated by:

- Official Statistics Law (Official Gazette of RS, number 104/2009), Articles 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, and 49.

(http://www.stat.gov.rs/media/2322/zakon_o_statisticie.pdf)

- Rulebook on statistical data protection in the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia

 and

- Guidelines on measures of data and information protection in the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia

(https://www.stat.gov.rs/en-us/o-nama/dokumenti/pravilnici-i-uputstva/pravilnici-i-uputstva/)

Confidential data are treated according to the confidentiality related policy rules. See Official statistics law.

Data are not released at the national level.

Data are not released at the national level.

Not applicable.

The STS time series on hours worked by employees are not currently being published nationally, but they are processed and transmitted to Eurostat quarterly.

Data are not released at the national level.

Data are not released at the national level.

Data are not released at the national level.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

All methodological documentation can be found on the official http://www.stat.gov.rs/en-us/istrazivanja/methodology-and-documents/.

Quality report for this indicator is not required.

The SORS quality management system is relied on the Serbian official statistics mission and vision, as well as on the European Statistics Code of Practice – CoP and the Total Quality Management – TQM principles, which together make the common quality framework of the European Statistical System (ESS).

For more information, please see the documents at http://www.stat.gov.rs/en-US/o-nama/sistem-upravljanja-kvalitetom.

Data on hours worked by employees are based on reliable data from appropriate administrative sources. Before publishing and sending data to Eurostat, extensive mathematical and logical control of data is performed.

The use of administrative sources for obtaining data on hours worked by employees is in line with international recommendations, standards and practices.

This variable is only delivered to Eurostat.

On biennial basis (once in two years), by the means of web interview, implemented is the User Satisfaction Survey. The survey results are available at SORS website: http://www.stat.gov.rs/en-US/o-nama/sistem-upravljanja-kvalitetom

All levels of processing and grouping that are required by the Regulations concerning STS are produced. Regarding data on hours worked by employees, the definition is harmonized with Commission Regulation (EC) No 1503/2006.

The survey is based on data from administrative sources, which ensures high level of coverage and data quality.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Data are transmitted to Eurostat according the deadline, not later than three months after the reference quarter.

The given deadlines are respected.

National concept on hours worked by employees has been defined as European concept. There is no deviation from European concepts concerning the definition, classification used, statistical units and time period.

Until 2018, the survey was carried out on the basis of the Monthly survey on employees and their salaries and wages (RAD-1). However, in recent years, following recommendations and guidelines of Eurostat, SORS intensified efforts in order to use administrative sources when conducting statistical surveys, whenever possible. To this end, from January 2018, the STS labour indicators are calculated on the basis of data from the Tax Administration records, which are collected through the electronic form of Individual tax return on accrued taxes and contributions (PPP-PD).

Time series break occurred in 2018 due to the change of data source (statistical survey was abolished and data from tax administration began to be used).

For now, data from the records of the Tax Administration are the only source of data on hours worked by employees, based on accounting records. Therefore compatibility with data from other sources is not done.

Not applicable.

Data are taken from administrative sources (Tax Administration records), thus reducing the survey costs to a minimum. Also, the reporting units are no longer obligated to fill in and submit data.

The SORS general revision policy constitutes the global frame ensuring that each statistical domain shall define its own revision policy in compliance with its specific nature.

The general SORS revision policy determines:

- general rules of revisions of the published data,

- forms of informing users as regards the possible causes of revisions,

- categories of revisions, and

- documents covering all aspects of revisions.

The general SORS revision policy is available at https://www.stat.gov.rs/en-US/o-nama/dokumenti/politike/politike.

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

Meaning that the data on hours worked by employees are final and as such are transmitted in Eurostat. Hours worked by employees indices for STS are not published national level.

Calendar for data revision does not exist.

Once published, data on hours worked by employees are final and not subject to revision.

• Ministry of Finance – Tax Administration, Individual tax return on accrued taxes and contributions (PPP-PD form)
• Statistical Business Register (SBR)

Data are collected monthly but they are processed for the quarter.

Data from Tax Administration. Tax Administration's data are transmitted electronically, through web service, i.e. FTP service (File Transfer Protocol), via a secured network of the Administration of General Affairs of government bodies of the Republic of Serbia. Data are taken on the 15th day of the month.

Data from SBR. Data on economic activity, type of ownership and status of a business entity (which determines whether a business entity is a legal entity or not) are taken from the SBR database.

Since the data on the hours worked by employees index are based on the same data source as the data on average monthly salaries and wages in the Republic of Serbia, the criteria for the first level of data validation for this indicator are contained in the criteria for controlling data on average earnings. This control consists of the following stages:

• Contingent control is conducted (comparison of number of records, mass of accrued salaries and wages and number of recipients for current and previous month is performed);
• Comparison and analysis of data on the number of business entities and employees from the registers of CRCSI, SBR and TA are performed;
• The contingent of records that meets the established criteria enters the processing of data on average salaries and wages;
• In the contingent of records which is allocated for the processing of data on average salaries and wages, control and analysis of relevant data is carried out in order to identify potential errors and check the data quality;
• Extreme values (outliers) are detected and excluded.

Data checks are performed by automated procedures and by experts’ data analysis. Data is compared with data from the previous period.

About 3% of records are excluded from the contingent allocated to the processing of data on average salaries and wages. These records do not fully meet the requirements necessary to be taken into account when calculating average earnings (tax return records that do not contain all the necessary elements of earnings: tax, contribution, net earnings as well as outliers).

After controlling all data related to wages and salaries and paid hours, which were received from the Tax Administration, the data on the basis of which the hours worked by employees indices for the STS are calculated, are transferred to a separate database. In that database, the harmonization of data is done in accordance with the definition of hours worked by employees for STS business statistics and indices are calculated after that.

Before sending data to Eurostat, additional mathematical and logical control of the final results is carried out.

The data, obtained from the Tax Administration, are stored in a separate database in which indices of hours worked by employees are calculated.

In a negligible number of cases, when the data on paid hours are missing, their number is imputed based on the total monthly number of hours.

Data delivered to Eurostat are:

• Working day adjusted, not seasonally adjusted,
• Working day adjusted and seasonally adjusted.

Please see annex.

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