The labour cost survey is a structural survey which records the costs of employing labour. Detailed information on all labour cost components is compiled in this structural statistics according to international standards. In addition to the components of gross earnings (for instance extra payments, employment benefits to encourage capital formation, remuneration for hours worked) it covers all non-wage costs. These include in particular employers’ compulsory contributions to social security funds, employers’ contributions to company old-age pension schemes, the costs of the continued payment of remuneration and of vocational education and further training.
The labour cost survey also determines exact figures for the labour input to which the costs relate. That is the number of hours actually worked and the number of full-time jobs. Part-time jobs are converted to full-time jobs using the standard working hours of the local unit.
Thus the labour cost survey makes it possible to calculate the cost of employing a full-time employee and the price of one hour of work in Germany. At the same time, the survey provides information on the composition of labour costs in Germany.
In July 2010 the Federal Statistical Office brought the publication of results on labour costs per hour worked in line with the standards of the International Labour Organisation (ILO). Since then, apprentices and wage subsidies have been included. From that time, the figure published has been about 5% lower for the average of all branches. As a consequence, comparisons with earlier publications on labour costs per hour worked are no longer possible.
How are the data of the labour cost survey collected?
The labour cost survey is a decentralised statistical survey. The statistical offices of the Länder are responsible for collecting and checking the data and for compiling Länder results. The Federal Statistical Office’s tasks are on the one hand to prepare and advance the statistical survey in methodological terms and to compile and publish a federal result based on the Länder results. On the other, there is methodological work such as safeguarding the statistical confidentiality of tabulated results, making detailed calculations of error margins for quality assurance purposes and calculating data which are not collected as such. The latter includes in particular the compilation of data on the public service.
The labour cost survey has been conducted since 1958. However, only selected industrial branches were covered at the beginning. It is only since reference year 2004 that all branches of industry and the service sector have been covered at four year intervals. Therefore, comparisons over longer periods of time cannot be made of all branches but only of part of industry.
Data are collected from public and private-sector employers by means of questionnaires. Employers are obliged to provide information in accordance with the earnings statistics law.
To reduce the burden on the business sector, enterprises with fewer than ten employees are not included in the survey. The statistics published thus reflect the cost situation without considering micro enterprises, which may reduce the informational value depending on the branch concerned.
A one-stage, stratified sample is drawn from all other enterprises for the labour cost survey. Stratification variables are the following: Land, branch of economic activity, and enterprise size class. For the 2008 survey, 32,000 enterprises were selected. That was about every ninth enterprise of the Federal Republic of Germany with at least ten employees. These enterprises provided data on 10.5 million employees. In addition, there were data on some 4 million public service employees from other statistics of the Federal Statistical Office.
The earnings statistics law and several EU regulations specify in detail how the survey has to be conducted timely and at regular intervals on the basis of internationally harmonised concepts und thus guarantee the availability and good quality of the statistics.
When are the results of the labour cost survey released?
First key results of the labour cost survey are published in the form of a press release about 19 months after the end of the reference period. The press releases are available on the web site of the Federal Statistical Office. Detailed results are published in Fachserie 16,Heft 1,Heft2undHeft 3 : Arbeitskosten im Produzierenden Gewerbe und im Dienstleistungsbereich(Subject-Matter Series 16, Numbers 1, 2 and 3: Labour costs in industry and the service sector).
How accurate are the results of the labour cost survey?
The simple error margin – the relative standard error of the sample – for the variable "Labour costs per hour worked" is between 0% and 9%, in most cases between 0.5 and 2.0%, for branches of economic activity at Division level. Precision increases with the size of the branch of economic activity, measured by the number of employees.
