National Statistical Institute

Statistics on Labour costs, Research and Development, Innovation and Information Society Department

Todor Davidkov

head of unit

2, P. Volov Str.; 1038 Sofia, Bulgaria

[email protected]

+35929857568

The Structure of Earnings Survey is aimed to give detailed and comparable at European Union level information on distribution and relationships between the level of remuneration, individual characteristics of employees and these of their employer.

Objects of the survey are: characteristics of employer (enterprise, local unit) - number of employees in the local unit, type of ownership, existence and type of collective pay agreement, size of the enterprise; individual characteristics of employees - age, sex, educational level, occupation, length of service, mode of employment (full-time/part-time), type of employment contract, annual gross earnings, annual bonuses, annual payments in kind, annual days of paid holiday leave, monthly gross earnings, earnings related to overtime, earnings related to shift work, employee's compulsory social security contributions and income tax, number of paid monthly hours, number of paid overtime hours.

· Classification of Economic Activities (CEA-2008, for international use NACE.BG 2008);

· National Classification of Occupations and Duties-2011 (NCOD-2011) - Data were collected by the NCOD-2005 as it was the acting classification in 2010 and after that recoded into NCOD-2001 to be in compliance with international classification ISCO-08, in accordance with the requirements of the Commission Regulation N1738/2005.

· Nomenclature of Educational Levels - in compliance with the International Standard Classification of Education, 1997 version (ISCED 1997);

· Classification of Territorial Units for Statistical Purposes in Bulgaria - NUTS.

Enterprises with 1 or more employees in economic activity within sections B to S of NACE.BG-2008 are covered.

Employees are all persons who have a direct employment contract with their employer and receive remuneration in cash or in kind for certain quality and quantity of work done, irrespective of the type of work performed, the number of working hours (full or part-time) and the duration of the employment contract (fixed or indefinite).

Gross earnings are the remuneration in cash paid to the employee directly and regularly by the employer at the time of each pay period, before deductions of any tax and social security contributions payable by employee and withheld by the employer.

The gross monthly earnings of employees include:

• basic wage or salary for work done or time worked in the reference month;
• earnings related to annual paid holiday leave and other periods of absences paid for entirely by the employer at a full rate;
• payment for overtime work;
• special payment for shift work - night shifts, week-end or public-holiday shifts;
• payments for seniority, harmful and other specific working conditions, high personal qualification or other collectively or individually agreed additional payments; 
• bonuses and gratuities paid regularly in each pay period, even if the amount varies from month to month.

The annual gross earnings are the total amount of the regular payments in cash received by the employee for the work performed during the reference year, including:

· the value of annual payments in kind (goods and services) made available to employees by employer;

· all irregular payments as quarterly bonuses, 13th or 14th salaries and other gratuities not received at each pay period.

Paid hours cover the total number of normal and overtime hours to which the gross monthly earnings in the reference month relate. The number of paid hours includes: actually worked normal hours, worked and paid overtime hours, hours not worked but nevertheless paid by the employer at a full rate (annual leave, work stoppages and other hours paid such as for medical examinations).

Local units (territorial structures) with 1 or more employees belonging to enterprises with 1 or more employees.

The structure of earnings statistics relates to enterprises with at least one employee in economic activities within sections B to S of NACE.BG-2008, including section O "Public administration".

Area of Republic of Bulgaria.

2002, 2006, 2010, 2014, 2018,2022

Not applicable.

Number, Percent(%), BGN.

The reference year is the calendar 2022. For representative month is approved October as being the month that is least affected by absences owing to annual leave or public holidays.

·Council Regulation (EC) No 530/1999 concerning structural statistics on earnings and on labour costs;

·Commission Regulation (EC) No 1916/2000;

·Commission Regulation (EC) No 1738/2005;

·National Statistical Program 2023.

Not applicable.

· Law on Statistics (Statistics Act);

· Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 on European statistics (recital 24 and Article 20(4)) of 11 March 2009 (OJ L 87, p. 164), stipulates the need to establish common principles and guidelines ensuring the confidentiality of data used for the production of European statistics and the access to those confidential data with due account for technical developments and the requirements of users in a democratic society.

Individual data are not published according to Art. 25 of Statistics Act. Dissemination of individual data is performed only according to Art. 26 of the Statistics Act.

The publication data for the statistical information is 15 July 2024, i.e. 18 months and 15 days after the reference year. This date is included in the Release Calendar presenting the results of the statistical surveys carried out by the National Statistical Institute.

The calendar is available on the NSI website: http://www.nsi.bg/en/node/480

Data are published on the NSI website, section Labour market in accordance with Law on Statistics (Chapter 5) and the European Statistics Code of Practice respecting professional independence and in an objective, professional and transparent manner in which all users are treated equitably.

Once per four years.

None.

Detailed results are available to all users of the NSI website under the heading Labour Market - Structural (four yearly) statistics on earnings and labour costs - Structure of Earnings - national level, 4-year periodicity: http://www.nsi.bg/en/node/6520

Information System INFOSTAT: https://infostat.nsi.bg/infostat/pages/module.jsf?x_2=95

Access to the anonymised micro data is granted according to the Rules for granting access to anonymised micro-data for scientific and research purposes set by NSI.

Not applicable.

A quality report is prepared according to requirements of the Commission Regulation 698/2006.

According to Article 2, Para 3 of the Bulgarian Law on Statistics statistical information shall be produced in compliance with the following criteria for quality: adequacy, accuracy, timeliness, punctuality, accessibility and clarity, comparability and logical consistency.

According art. 10 of Council Regulation 530/1999 the national authorities shall ensure that the results reflect the true situation of the total population of units with a sufficient degree of representativity. The national authorities submit to Eurostat at its request after each reference period a report to enable the quality of the statistics to be evaluated.

According to the Commission Regulation 698/2006, having regard to Council Regulation (EC) No 530/1999, each Member State shall prepare quality report for evaluation of the quality of structure of earnings statistics at the latest 24 months after the end of the reference period.

The user groups are defined on the base of the data requests received by NSI. The customers of the SES results can be classified as follows:

· National institutions - Ministries, Agencies, Councils, other governmental bodies and public;

· International institutions - Eurostat, ILO, OECD, UNICEF, UNECE;

· Social partners: Trade unions and employment associations

· Private institutions and businesses, incl. media

· Researchers and students

Internal to NSI: other units of NSI, e.g. dealing with LFS, Classifications, National Accounts, Household Budgets etc. for purpose of comparison or other.

NSI has not carried out a specific survey among users to know their needs of information concerning SES and whether they are satisfied with the published results. Users usually prefer more detailed data at the lowest levels of the classifications applied in the survey which is problematic due to the limited number of observations and correspondingly the lower level of precision.

The survey covers all mandatory variables according to the Commission Regulation (EC) No 1738/2005. There is full coverage as well in terms of size of the enterprises (with 1+ employees) and of economic activities (NACE.BG 2008 sections B - S, including O).

The overall accuracy of the survey results depends on:

· number of the surveyed units

To achieve a certain desired accuracy of the survey results a sampling plan of employees and local units is made. First, the total number of persons who should be observed is calculated. The calculations are made with 95% confidence level that the maximum error of the estimate shall be within a preset interval. The resulting number of persons is distributed proportionally to the population by three stratification criteria: the size of the local unit of economic activity and territory (location) of the local unit. Based on the parameters of the population and proportionally distributed number of employees that need to be observed, it is calculated how many local units must be selected from each cell.

· the survey framework

To construct the framework population from which the sample survey is to be selected data for the local units and the number of employees from the comprehensive Annual survey of employees, hours worked, wages and salaries and other labor costs for 2017 were used. For purposes of grossing-up procedures of the sampling data, the parameters of the population are updated with information for 2018, which is available approximately 12 months after the reference period.

· survey tools

The survey questionnaire is developed on paper and electronic format. The electronic questionnaire is an on-line based with incorporated logical controls allowing data to be validated while entered.

· methods of identifying and addressing possible errors

Approximately 100 checks are applied to verify data concerning: completeness of responses, data plausibility, arithmetic and logical consistency between the collected variables. Data editing is done by: a reference back to the persons filled information, use of information from administrative sources (Personal register of insured persons of the National Social Security Institute), use of other statistical surveys containing information about the surveyed units, application of statistical methods and techniques for the assessment of missing values (mean value imputation, the most frequent value imputation, etc.).

Coefficients of variation (relative standard errors) are calculated by use of the Horvitz-Tompson estimator. Coefficients of variation (CVs) are low for most of the relevant items and important classification levels.

Coefficients of variations by working time schedule and gender - %

The highest CVs appeared for small heterogeneous populations with low sampling probability and  in cases of high unit non-response rate (small number of observations).

The following criteria were agreed for data publishing:

·         cells with earnings (monthly/hourly/annual) showing CV between 20 and 30% were put in parenthesis;

·         cells with earnings (monthly/hourly/annual) showing CV higher than 30% were hidden (deleted) and marked with sloped forward dash ‘/ ‘;

·         cells with number of observations between 4 and 9 were put in parenthesis;

·         cells with number of observations between 1 and 3 were hidden (deleted) and marked with sloped forward dash ‘/ ‘.

Extreme values were removed from the dataset and grossing-up factors were recalculated. From calculations were excluded 0.09% of records with extreme values of hourly earnings.

Non-sampling errors are described in details in the Quality Report where assessment is made of:

·         over-coverage - the percentage of units covered in the survey that are out of scope of the target population;

·         measurement errors - from the wrong interpretation of the survey questionnaire and respondents’ errors when not complying with explanatory notes for completion of the questionnaire - measured through the percentage of the wrong cases identified by the applied arithmetic and logic controls.

·         the relative share of the non-response from sampled units is 7.3%. The non-responded units are grouped in two basic groups by reasons: (a) because of lack of up-to-date framework at the time of sample selection - restructured, closed or units without activity during reference period; lack of contact; (b) units refused to respond . To neutralize the errors resulting from the lack of response from some of the units in the sample, the weights are recalculated with the number of respondents units.

·         percentage of non-responses of individual variables or individual employees in the observation unit;

·         percentage of corrected cases of key variables.

Publication of survey results at national level: 15 July 2024

Submission of micro data to Eurostat: 1 July 2024

Issue of paper and electronic publication with detailed survey results: January 2025

Micro data were sent to Eurostat on 1 July 2024.
The reasons for the delays from the scheduled deadlines are:
• difficulty to collect data from respondents and to achieve a good response rate;
• lack of time and human resources.

The national and regional data (level 1 - statistical zones) are conformed to the acting Classification of territorial units for statistical purposes which is application of the European classification NUTS. 

The comparability over time is influenced mainly by changes in definitions and classifications as result of amendments of Community legislation as well as by change in coverage of enterprises.

There are other statistical sources that produce information on number of employees, earnings and working time:

• Quarterly Survey on Number of Employees, Time Worked, Wages and Salaries and Other Labour Costs – number of employees; wages and salaries; worked days and worked hours;
• Annual Survey on Employed Persons, Wages and Salaries and Other Labour Costs - number of employees; wages and salaries; worked days and worked hours;
• Labour Force Survey - number of employees; worked hours;
• National Accounts - number of employees; worked hours.

The results from the 2022 Structure of Earnings Survey are relatively comparable with from the above-sited surveys due to the methodological characteristics of each information source in regards to: goals, unit of observation, definitions, coverage of economic activities, statistical methods used for collection and estimation of variables surveyed. 

Indicators within the data set are internally coherent.

Survey on respondents’ burden is not carried out.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Source of the data is a sampling statistical survey. The sampling procedure used for the SES contains two stages. In the first stage, a stratified random sample of local units without replacement is drawn. Stratification criteria used include:

·         economic activity – divisions (2-digit level) of NACE.BG 2008;

·         the number of employees in the local unit: 1 to 9 employees; 10 to 49 employees; 50 to 249 employees; 250 to 499 employees; 500 to 999 employees; 1000 and more employees;

·         regional breakdown – level 1 of national Classification of Territorial Units for Statistical Purposes in Bulgaria, in force since 2009:

-          BG3 - Severna i Yugoiztochna Bulgaria

-          BG4 – Yugozapadna i Yuzhna Tsentralna Bulgaria.

At the second stage, a systematic sample of employees is taken within each of the selected local units.

At the first sampling stage 19 182 local units were selected (9.1 form total population) from which 17 331 responded units (90% from the sample) provided data for approximately 217 500 employees (9.2% from total population).

Once per four years.

Data are collected through tailor-made questionnaire which consists of: part A collecting information for sampled local units and part B collecting information for each sampled employee. The questionnaire is accompanied by a dispatch note to each respondent about the purposes of the survey and explanatory notes for sampling of employees within the local units and instructions on information required. The SES questionnaire was developed on paper and electronic format, uploaded on the official web page of NSI. The Head office of NSI provides methodological assistance to the respondents and to the Regional Statistical Offices (RSOs) on completion and processing of the information.

Approximately 100 controls have been applied on micro data for validation of: completeness, plausible values, logical and arithmetic coherence between collected variables. Data are checked at three levels: (1) during the initial data entry - in the electronic questionnaire by respondents and by the RSOs from paper questionnaires. (2) at the RSOs on the joint regional micro data set; (3) at NSI level - on the joint national micro data set. Besides micro data validation, survey results are compared with other sources of similar type of information.

The data processing goes through the following stages:

·         entry of the initial information into electronic format;

·         data validation;

·         data editing and imputation on the base of additional information from respondents and/or other statistical and administrative sources;

·         weighting of the sampling data to gross-up results over the total surveyed population;

·         producing of summarized table results.

The software used for data processing:

·         completion and processing of the individual data by respondents - on-line based questionnaire;

·         integration of individual files into a database, validation and export of outputs from the database by different dimensions, checks and formatting of the macro data to be sent to Eurostat – MS Access;

·         processing of the integrated national database, table outputs and analyses – SPSS.

Not applicable.