Statistical presentation

Data description

The index of average earnings shows the development of the total wage per hour for employees working for the government, regional- or municipal authorities. The index of average earnings covers the total wage paid inclusive of both the employer's and employee's contributions to the pension scheme, but exclusive of holiday payments and other irregular payments, such as bonuses. The total wage paid is, as a principle, measured against the number of hours actually worked.

All publicly employed persons, including apprentices and young people under the age 18, are included in the statistics. Nevertheless, some groups of employment are not covered, such as young people employed under specific work arrangements or people with disabilities that only work part-time or are compensated to some extent. In addition, employment groups such as military personnel under conscription, municipal counselors etc.

With respect to the index on state employees for the 1st and 2nd quarter of 2015, it should be mentioned that the index due to data quality issues, does not include data on employees from the Church of Denmark. Work is in progress to resolve the issue so that data on these employees are once again included in the index for the 3rd quarter of 2015.

Classification system

The index is published for different groups of industry in accordance with Statistics Denmark's 10-, 19- and 36-standard groupings of industries, see Danish Industrial Classifications 2007. The Danish Industrial Classification is based on Eurostat's classification system NACE Rev. 2.

Sector coverage

The sector public government and services include all employees in government-, regional- or municipal administration. The delimitation of what belongs to the different sectors follows the same principle as the delimitation used for the national accounts.

Statistical concepts and definitions

Wage: Remuneration paid in cash by the employer to the employee for work done.

Payments for holidays: Extra payments paid by the employer to the employee for holidays. The payment is often computed as a fraction of the monthly wages.

Wages and Salaries: Information on wages and salaries for all employees working in the public sector.

Payments for pension schemes: Payments for pension schemes

Irregular Payments: Payments received on an irregular basis , including e.g. bonuses, regulation of wage, compensation for not holding vacation, etc.

Enterprise: An enterprise is a company or organisation involved in economic activity e.g. by producing and selling products.

Statistical unit

The counting unit is the individual employment of a person in public administration or services (government, regional- or municipal authorities).

Statistical population

All employees working in the Danish public sector.

Reference area

The index of the average earnings of public administration and services covers workers employed in the public sector in Denmark.

Time coverage

These statistics cover the time period from first quarter of 2005 and onwards.

Base period

First quarter 2005 is the base period, where the value of the index is equal to 100.

Unit of measure

The unit of measure is the index points.

Reference period

The census date is a pay period (month or 2-week period) in the second month of a quarter.

Frequency of dissemination

The statistics are published quarterly.

Legal acts and other agreements

The Act on Statistics Denmark § 6 and § 8. Information obtained from the quarterly data collection with respect to wages and hours of work is used in the statistics on earnings and employment compiled by the EU. In particular it can be referred to the Regulation (EC) No 450/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning the labour cost index for more information.

Cost and burden

Data is extracted from the public pay transfer systems. Consequently, the respondents (institutions, municipalities and counties) are not directly involved in reporting data, apart from being responsible for maintaining a few variables in the pay system.

Comment

Other information is available at the subject page on Earnings and Labour costs.