Labour Costs for Corporations and Organizations

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Labour Market, Social Statistics
Nete Nielsen
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Labour Costs for Corporations and Organizations 2024

The purpose of the statistics of total labour costs for corporations and organizations is to monitor trends and the level of the total labour costs broken down by industry, occupation and main components. The statistics on total labour costs are published once every year and are used to compare the total labour costs across industries and occupations.

Statistical presentation

The labour costs for the private sector is published for 9 of the main class of industries in addition to 9 different types of occupation. Data on earnings are obtained from the annual structure of earnings survey for the private sector, which is based on a full-scale survey comprising business enterprises with more than 10 full-time employees, while other labour costs are based on a special sample survey for enterprises with 10 or more employees, also including apprentices and employees under the age 18. The labour costs comprise each employee's total earnings in connection with his/her job and other labour costs that are not considered to be an income for an employee.

Statistical processing

Data concerning the employees' earnings and wage are collected for each individual employee, while data on the other costs of the enterprise is collected at the level of the enterprise. Other labour costs are distributed on to the employees on the basis of a distribution formed by regulation and logical reasoning. The total labour costs per employee is calculated as the sum of all wages and the sum of other labour costs divided by the number of employees.

Relevance

The labour costs are used by enterprises to compare costs associated with having people employed, with the costs of other enterprises with similar type of employees. The comparison is often done within a certain branch of economic activity or for a certain type of work. In addition, the statistics can be used to compare labour costs across EU-member countries.

Accuracy and reliability

The statistics are based on information about both earnings and other labor costs. Earnings account for the vast majority of total labor costs. The other costs mainly include mandatory contributions. Data is collected from a sample of companies with more than nine employees, and almost all submissions are included in the final statistics, which are only published with final figures

Timeliness and punctuality

The statistics are published once every year around august. There are normally no delays in publishing the statistics.

Comparability

Due to changes in the compilation method, comparisons with statistics prior to 2014 are not possible. Owing to the fact that labour costs since 2002 are distributed per employee and not per enterprise as previously done, comparisons with statistics compiled before 2002 is not possible. Also, the statistics on labour costs for 1997-2001 are only to a limited extent comparable to those before 1997, which has to do with the application of a new method starting from 1997.

Accessibility and clarity

These statistics are published yearly in the StatBank under the subject Labour costs. For further information, go to the subject page.