News 25 Nov 2024
Statistics Finland renews statistics on wages and salaries: reviewed structure of earnings statistics in place of sector-specific statistics
Statistics Finland will combine the statistics on wages and salaries into the structure of earnings statistics in 2025. The aim of the review is to clarify and simplify the statistics on wages and salaries and to improve the comparability of data. Previously, wage and salary data have been published in five different sets of statistics, but in future, all the data can be found in one set of statistics.
In the review, the Incomes Register covering all employment relationships and wages and salaries is used as the data basis for the structure of earnings statistics. The data are supplemented with wage and salary data collected by employer organisations, which provide background information on employment relationships missing from the Incomes Register, such as occupational titles and working hours.
“The coverage of the statistics improves when data are obtained from the Incomes Register on small enterprises with fewer than five employees from which wage and salary data have not earlier been available at all,” says Senior Statistician Hanna Jokimäki.
Although separate sector-specific statistics on wages and salaries are no longer produced, sector-specific data are published as part of the structure of earnings statistics. The review improves the internal comparability of the statistics when data on all sectors come from the same source.
“The aim is to publish more detailed data by occupational group, level of education and field of activity in the structure of earnings statistics. We will also produce earnings for regular working hours and data specified by form of remuneration,” says Jokimäki.
“Statistical data describing gender pay differentials will continue to be available. When the coverage of the statistics is extended to small enterprises, it improves the possibilities to form a picture of the pay differentials of all wage and salary earners.”
In some respects, the data content of the statistics on wages and salaries will be reduced in the review. For example, task-specific wages and salaries are not published in the structure of earnings statistics, because such earnings data cannot be produced from the data content of the Incomes Register. Data are no longer produced on earnings for hours worked by hourly-paid employees or on the level of occupational titles in the public sector.
The data of the new structure of earnings statistics concerning the year 2024 will be published as estimated at the end of 2025.
“A wide array of source data are used in the structure of earnings statistics and their completion date has an effect on the release schedule of the statistics. For this reason, the delay in the publication of the statistics is around 11 to 12 months from the end of the statistical reference year,” says Hanna Jokimäki.
Statistics Finland follows the effects of the new data sources and methods on the data published in the statistics and will present them in more detail in the course of 2025.
Further information: Hanna Jokimäki tel. +358 029 551 3939, hanna.jokimaki@stat.fi
Statistics Finland will review its statistics on wages and salaries in 2025 (News 5 March 2024)