Changes in the wage and salary indices statistics

Date of change:

Statistcs: wage and salary indices

Date of change: 6.3.2024

Information about the change

The statistics are renewed in connection with the publication of data for 2024, when the reference period, the base year, is updated from 2015 to 2021. The new base year is defined in Regulation (No 2019/2152) of the European Parliament and of the Council on European business statistics and it concerns short-term business statistics of all Member States. In future, database tables published with the old base year (2015=100) will no longer be updated. 

Changing the base year and the changes made in connection with it have an effect on several statistics on short-term business trends published by Statistics Finland. Further information about the renewal can be found in a joint release.

In connection with updating the base year, the indices are calculated again from the beginning of 2021. In this connection, the data may become revised. The effects are of qualitative nature and are visible as revisions to data in some of the published industries. 

A new wages and salaries sum according to the Incomes Register will be introduced in the wage and salary indices in connection with the change of the base year. In future, the 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.   

In the same connection, the publication of the statistics at a lag of around one and a half months will accelerate and in future the wage and salary indices will be published at a lag of slightly over one month from the statistical reference period.  

Further information

Mikko Toiviainen
Senior Statistician
029 551 3589