News 5 Mar 2024
Statistics Finland will review its statistics on wages and salaries in 2025
Statistics Finland will review its statistics on wages and salaries in 2025. As a result of the review, the statistics on wages and salaries for the statistical reference year 2024 will be largely produced with data available from the Incomes Register. Instead of the present several industry-specific statistics on wages and salaries, data will be published under one set of statistics.
The new statistics on wages and salaries will replace the following statistics: local government wages and salaries, private sector monthly salaries, private sector hourly wages, central government monthly salaries and structure of earnings. The review also has an effect on the index of wage and salary earnings, the data source of which is statistics on wages and salaries.
The aim of the review is to harmonise and clarify statistics on wages and salaries and to improve the comparability of statistics. The Incomes Register, which contains the earnings data of all wage and salary earners, is utilised as the main data source for the new statistics on wages and salaries. In addition, other register and survey data are used as data sources.
Statistics Finland will release the new statistics on wages and salaries for the first time in the last quarter of 2025, when they will concern data for the statistical reference year 2024. The review will not yet affect the publication of statistics on wages and salaries in 2024. The statistics on wages and salaries published in 2024 concerning the statistical reference year 2023 are based on the present data sources, that is, mainly on wage and salary data collected by employer organisations and data from Statistics Finland's own data collection.
Statistics Finland will provide more detailed information on the progress of the review and its effects as the work advances. The effects of new data sources and methods on the data published in the statistics will be presented in more detail during 2025.
Incomes Register brings changes to statistics
One of the background factors for the review of the statistics on wages and salaries is the introduction of the national Incomes Register in 2019.
The Incomes Register is an electronic database that contains data on wages and salaries paid to all wage and salary earners. The Incomes Register was introduced in the reporting of earnings payment data at the beginning of 2019, and its aim has been to make the reporting and processing of earnings payment data more efficient. Starting from data to be released in 2025, the Incomes Register will be the main data source for Statistics Finland's new statistics on wages and salaries.
The Incomes Register provide up-to-date data on the earnings and employment relationships of all wage and salary earners. However, the Incomes Register will not replace all data sources of statistics on wages and salaries. Wage and salary statistics data collected by employer organisations will continue to be data sources for the statistics, because the Incomes Register does not contain necessary background variables for all employment relationships, for example, on occupation or working hours. Statistics Finland will also use other register and survey data currently used, such as the employment statistics data and the Register of Completed Education and Degrees. The data must also be supplemented by statistical methods, as there is no data source for all necessary background variables from which data on all wage and salary earners could be obtained.
Part of the data to be reported to the Incomes Register is voluntary and the coverage of these data in the register is significant from the perspective of the quality of the statistics on wages and salaries. The more data are reported to the Incomes Register, the less they need to be supplemented by statistical methods. Therefore, Statistics Finland hopes that employers would report comprehensive itemised earnings payment data to the Incomes Register, as well as background information on the employment relationship, such as data on occupational titles and working hours.
EU legislation renews statistics on wages and salaries
EU-level legislation related to statistics on wages and salaries is being renewed. The European Commission has proposed a new Regulation on labour market statistics on businesses. The Regulation would also apply to statistics on wages and salaries in EU countries. One of the objectives of the Regulation is to improve the comparability and coverage of statistics in EU Member States.
From the perspective of statistics on wages and salaries in Finland, the biggest change in legislation requirements compared to previous statistics compilation would be improvement of the coverage of the statistics. The current legislation requires production of EU-level wage and salary statistics on enterprises with at least ten wage and salary earners, whereas in future all employers with at least one wage and salary earner would be included in the statistics.
The Regulation is currently under consideration in the EU Council Working Party on Statistics, and it is meant to enter into force in the European Union's structure of earnings statistics produced every four years starting from the statistical reference year 2026. In national statistics, we aim to publish statistics on wages and salaries with a more comprehensive population already concerning 2024.
Towards new statistics on wages and salaries
The aim of the review of statistics on wages and salaries is to increase the clarity and comparability of statistics on wages and salaries for users. Using the Incomes Register as the main source of earnings data will in future increase comparability between different wage and salary earner groups and possibly simplify processing of data. The Incomes Register will make it possible to improve the coverage of statistics on wages and salaries to apply to small enterprises and wage and salary earner groups that, for some reason or another, have previously been excluded from the statistics.
In the initial stage, the aim is to produce a similar content in the reviewed statistics on wages and salaries as has been produced in the structure of earnings statistics. As data sources and methods change, it should be noted that the data produced starting from the statistical reference year 2024 are not fully comparable with data from earlier years.
Data on total monthly earnings and total hourly earnings continue to be the most important statistical data in the statistics on wages and salaries. Their distribution and average data are tabulated with various classifications concerning wage and salary earners and employers. The present sector-specific statistics on wages and salaries also calculate earnings for regular working hours, which are also produced in the new statistics on wages and salaries. Later on, the Incomes Register could enable such as breakdowns of pay items by income type in the statistics.
The lag in the new statistics on wages and salaries will be around one year from the end of the statistical reference period, that is, statistics concerning 2024 will presumably be published towards the end of 2025. The fairly long lag in the compilation of the statistics is caused by the slow completion of source data, especially data concerning background information on employment relationships. In the experimental statistics on wages and salaries in the Incomes Register, data concerning wages and salaries are produced with a fast schedule, but the data content and classification possibilities are less detailed there.
Further information about the review:
Hanna Jokimäki tel. +358 29 551 3939, firstname.lastname@stat.fi
Further information about sector-specific statistics on wages and salaries:
Local government wages and salaries, Heli Udd tel. +358 29 551 3522
Private sector monthly salaries and hourly wages, Harri Nummila tel. +358 29 551 3235 and Olli Ruuska tel. +358 29 551 3274
Central government monthly salaries, Matti Lahdenmäki tel. +358 29 551 3690