Labour Cost Survey

National Statistical Institute

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

Todor Davidkov

Head of department

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

[email protected]

+359 2 9857 568

The Labour Cost Survey is aimed to give detailed and comparable at European Union level information on distribution of employers' labour costs incurred on behalf of their employees.

Objects of the survey are: characteristics of employer (enterprise, local unit) - number of employees in the local unit, type of ownership, size of the enterprise, employees distribution by gender and mode of employment (full-time/part-time), paid days, wages and salaries costs, social security costs, employers' imputed social contributions, payments in kind, vocational training costs and other labour costs.

· National Classification of Economic Activities (NCEA-2003, for international use NACE.BG 2003);

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

Covered are enterprises (local units) from all economic activities except "Agriculture, hunting, forestry and fishing".

Employees are all persons who have a labour contract (fixed or permanent; full-time or part-time) with their employer by virtue of the Labour Code or the Civil Servants Act and who receive remuneration in cash or in kind for certain quality and quantity of work done.

Number of employees excludes:

• Unpaid owners or directors or managers (who are paid by way of profit share or fee);
• Members of the board of directors of the enterprise;
• Persons wholly remunerated by way of fees, or commission;
• Self-employed;
• Unpaid family workers;
• Voluntary workers;
• Persons in maternity leave which do not receive remuneration from employer;
• Persons in unpaid leave for more than six months;
• Seasonal workers which are in unpaid leave during the off season.

Full-time employees are those whose regular working hours are the same as collectively agreed or customary hours worked in the observed local unit or for certain occupational groups.

Part-time employees (half-day, half-week, half-month) are those whose regular working hours (daily, weekly, monthly) is less then collectively agreed or customary hours for the observed local unit or occupational group.

Days worked - the total number of days worked by all employees under labour contract during the reference year. For a day worked is considered every day spent on work irrespective of the number of actual hours spent.

Days not worked but nevertheless paid by the employer - the number of days not worked due to annual holydays/vacation, absence due to sickness (if it is paid by the employer), public holydays and other paid but not work days.

Hour actually worked - the total number of hours worked by all employees during the year. Hours actually worked are defined as the sum of all periods spent on direct and ancillary activities to produce goods and services.

Total Labour Costs includes wages and salaries paid by the employer in cash or in kind, employers' actual and imputed social contribution, taxes regarded as labour costs, vocational training costs and other labour costs.

Gross annual wages and salaries are the remunerations paid regularly to the employees by the employers before the deduction of any tax and social security contributions payable by the employees and withheld by the employers.

Gross wages and salaries comprise of:

- basic wages and salaries for time worked or work done;

- payments for statutory, contractual or voluntary leave;

- payments for overtime;

- additional payments for shift work, extreme working conditions, length of service etc.;

- monthly, quarterly and annual bonuses.

Employers' statutory social-security contributions. These consist of payments made compulsory by law and payable by employers for the benefit of their employees to social-security institutions. They include contributions to insurance schemes for retirement pension, sickness, maternity and disability, to unemployment insurance schemes, to insurance schemes for occupational accidents and diseases etc.

Collectively agreed, contractual and voluntary social-security contributions payable by the employer - these are all contributions paid by the employer to social-security schemes which are supplementary to those which are compulsory by law. They include supplementary pension sickness and unemployment insurance schemes.

Employers' imputed social contributions these are payments made directly by employers to their employees or former employees without involving a social-security fund. Instead, the benefits are paid out of the own resources of the employers. Examples for such payments are: guaranteed remuneration in the event of sickness (for the first three days), payments to employees leaving the enterprise, payments made to employees on retirement etc.

Social expenses and benefits (payments in kind) - this variable refers to an estimate of the value of all goods and services made available to employees through the employer. It includes, meal vouchers, company products, staff housing, covering transport expenses between home and work place, company cars, etc.

Vocational training costs paid by the employer - these include: expenditure on vocational-training services and facilities small repairs and maintenance of buildings and installations, excluding staff costs; expenditure on participation in courses; the fees of instructors from outside the enterprise; expenditure on teaching aids and tools used for training; sums paid by the enterprise to vocational-training organizations, etc.

Other expenditure paid by the employer - this includes in particular: recruitment costs (these are the sums paid to recruitment agencies, expenditure on job advertisements in the press, travel expenses paid to candidates called for interview, installation allowances paid to newly recruited staff, and working clothes provided by the employer.

The observation units are enterprises - companies, ministries, departments, political, religious, public and other organizations, that perform economical activities in Republic of Bulgaria during the reference year.

The labour costs statistics is based on the survey on the employees, wages and salaries and other labour costs, which is an exhaustive for all public and private sector enterprises irrespective of their economic activity and the legislation according to which they are founded.

The whole country is covered.

2004, 2008, 2012, 2016,2020

Not applicable.

The data source is the annual survey on Number of employees, wages and salaries and other labour costs as every four years additional variable are added to the survey to collect more detailed information on labour costs and comply with EU legislation in the field.

Four-yearly

The survey is exhaustive for all public and private sector enterprises.

The data validation goes through three stages:

• At the data entry;
• At regional level by the NSI Regional Statistical Offices;
• At national level by the NSI Head Office.

The data processing goes through the following stages:

• On-line data entry;
• Data validation;
• Correction of errors and imputation of missing information using administrative sources;
• Producing standardized output tables with main survey results.

Not applicable.

According to Article 2, point 3 from the Law on Statistics the 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 to Article 10 from Council Regulation (EC) No 530/1999 of 9 March 1999 concerning structural statistics on earnings and on labour costs 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 shall forward to Eurostat at its request after each reference period a report containing all relevant information relating to the implementation of the Regulation in the Member State concerned, to enable the quality of the statistics to be evaluated.

According to Commission Regulation (EC) No 698/2006 of 5 May 2006 implementing Council Regulation (EC) No 530/1999 as regards quality evaluation of structural statistics on labour costs and earnings each Member State shall prepare a quality report for the labour cost survey 24 months after the reference period.

The users groups are defined on the basis of the received data requests. They can be classified in the following main groups:

• National authorities - ministries, agencies, councils, other government bodies and public institutions;
• International organizations - Eurostat, ILO etc.
• Social Partners - unions, employers' organizations;
• Private organizations, enterprises, media;
• Researchers and students.

Internal users: Structural Business Statistics, National Accounts.

No information available.

All mandatory variables according to the Commission Regulation (EC) No 1737/2005 are covered. As regards the size class of enterprise and economic activity coverage, the small enterprises (with less than 10 employees) are included in the survey as well all economic activities from NACE.BG 2008 section B to S.

The overall accuracy of the survey results depends of:

• Survey tools. The statistical form for the survey is available in electronic and paper format. In 2008 the survey become part from Information system Business Statistics, which is on-line based allowing 24 hours data collection and incorporates logical and arithmetic controls visible immediately during the data entry;
• Methods for errors identification and correction. The data processing goes through three main stages of validation: 1) data are validated while entered to control the plausibility of the inserted values and item non-response; 2) at regional level, the Regional Statistical Offices of NSI perform post-validation incl. checks for coverage, extreme and missing values; 3) at national level, the Head Office of NSI performs additional validation as well for coverage and completeness. Comparability is made with administrative and other sources.

Not applicable - the survey is exhaustive.

After the consolidation of regional databases into national one additional checks are done for identification of duplicate cases, which are deleted from the database.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

The survey results are published 18 months after the reference period.

The survey results are presented at the actual date set in the National Statistical Institute Release Calendar or with minimal delay.

The national and regional statistical data on employees, wages and salaries and labour costs are in compliance with the acting Classification of territorial units for statistical purposes in Bulgaria (NUTS).

The comparability over time is disturbed by the changes of the Classification of Economic Activities.

All indicators are internal coherent.

There are other statistical surveys that produce information on number of employees, wages and salaries and labour costs:

• Quarterly survey on number of employees, time worked, wages and salaries and other labour costs - number of employees, wages and salaries, days and hours worked;
• Labour Force Survey - number of employees, hours worked;
• National Accounts - number of employees, hours worked, compensation of employees.

The results from Labour Cost Survey are relatively comparable with the above mentioned surveys due to the following main methodological differences: purpose of the survey; statistical unit, definition of variables, reference period, methods of data classification by economic activity, methods of data collection and calculation of weights.

• Annual survey on Number of employees, wages and salaries and other labour costs - number of employees, wages and salaries, days and hours worked. The data are completely coherent as the min part of the labour cost survey variables are taken from this survey. Every four years additional variables are added to the annual survey in order to collect more detailed information on labour costs.

Not applicable.

Detailed results are available to all users of the NSI website under the heading Labour Market - Annual statistics on employment and labour cost - Labour Costs: https://www.nsi.bg/en/node/6463

Access to anonymised micro-data can be granted for research and scientific purposes upon request and following the Rules for granting access to anonymised micro-data for scientific and research purposes set by NSI.

Not applicable.

No information is available for the respondents' burden.

· Law on Statistics;

· Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 2009 on European statistics (provision 24 and Article 20 (4)) (OJ L 87, p. 164), stipulates the necessity 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 disseminated following the rules set in Article 25 from the Law on Statistics. The dissemination of individual data is done only under Article 26 from the same law.