News 20 Jan 2020
Statistics Finland joined users of wage and salary data of the Incomes Register
The use of wage and salary data in the Incomes Register extended significantly from the beginning of 2020. In addition to Statistics Finland, the right to use data was granted to the administrative branch of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment, the Employment Fund (adult education benefits), non-life insurance companies, unemployment funds, municipalities and joint municipal authorities, the Finnish Workers’ Compensation Center, the Patient Insurance Centre, occupational safety and health authorities, and the Region of Åland and its authorities.
Statistics Finland will utilise the data contained in the Incomes Register widely in its statistics production. The data on wages and salaries obtained from the Incomes Register will replace in stages several sets of present data available from the Tax Administration and as far as possible, also many data collected with separate data collections.
As a result of the introduction of the Incomes Register, data concerning wages and salaries will be more up-to-date than before. “In addition, the data will be total data concerning all wage and salary earners, including data on wages and salaries of small enterprises or temporary foreign labour force that were previously missing from many statistics,” says Head of Development Reetta Moilanen. Continuously updated data also include better information than at present on the wages and salaries and employment of seasonal workers, students and pensioners.
At Statistics Finland, the Incomes Register data will be first used in the wage and salary indices, when information concerning January 2020 will be released in March. After this, the data will be adopted in the production of wage and salary data of the structural and financial statement statistics and national accounts.
Over this year, the quality of the data is observed in the production of several other sets of statistics. The aim is that the present data collection data could be replaced with Incomes Register data in the sector-specific statistics on wages and salaries, structure of earnings statistics, employment statistics, labour cost index and index of wage and salary earnings, income distribution statistics and Labour Force Survey.
Voluntary reporting of data decreases separate data collections
In order to use the data of the Incomes Register fully in statistics production, the data should also include broadly supplementary additional information given on a voluntary basis. Additional information important for statistics production are such as occupational titles or establishments describing a person's work task.
“If employers have not reported this information to the Incomes Register at all or only partly, Statistics Finland will have to make separate data collections to enterprises in future to ensure sufficiently high-quality statistics production,” says Reetta Moilanen.
Incomes Register gives opportunities for statistics production
The Incomes Register data enable the production of completely new information and statistics. In addition, the introduction of the data may bring changes to the contents of the statistics and the concepts used there. Besides statistics production, the Incomes Register data will be combined with Statistics Finland's other data and form totally new data for research use.
We will provide information on all changes caused by the Incomes Register both on Statistics Finland's web pages and in more detail on the web pages of each set of statistics or data collection.
Further information:
Head of Development Reetta Moilanen, tel. +358 29 551 2709, Head of Statistics Matti Simpanen, tel. +38 29 551 3512