Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union

Unit F3: Labour market and lifelong learning

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The Structure of Earnings Survey (SES) is a 4-yearly survey that provides EU-wide harmonised structural data on gross earnings, hours paid and annual days of paid holiday leave, which are collected under Council Regulation (EC) No 530/1999 concerning structural statistics on earnings and on labour costs, and Commission Regulation (EC) No 1738/2005 amending Regulation (EC) No 1916/2000 as regards the definition and transmission of information on the structure of earnings. This large data collection represents a reach data source for policy-making and research purposes.

The SES provides detailed and comparable information on relationships between the level of hourly, monthly and annual remuneration, personal characteristics of employees (sex, age, occupation, length of service, highest educational level attained, etc.) and their employer (economic activity, size and economic control of the enterprise).

Regional data is also available.

The following international classifications are used:

• for economic activities: Statistical Classification of Economic Activities in the European Community, Rev. 2 (2008) (NACE); collected at 2-digit level and published in Eurostat's online database on 1-digit level
• for occupation: International Standard Classification of Occupations 2008 (ISCO-08) – pages 3-34; collected at 2-digit level (and, if possible, at the 3-digit level) and published in Eurostat's online database on 1-digit level
• for education: International Standard Classification of Education 2011 (ISCED 2011) – Section 9. (pages 71-72); collected and published only at the level of 4 main groups (G1 - G4):

• • G1: Group 1: Basic education (0 Less than primary; 1 Primary; 2 Lower secondary)
  • G2: Group 2: Secondary education (3 Upper secondary; 4 Post-secondary (non-tertiary) )
  • G3: Group 3: Tertiary education (up to 4 years) (5 Short-cycle tertiary; 6 Bachelor or equivalent)
  • G4: Group 4: Tertiary education (more than 4 years) (7 Master or equivalent; 8 Doctoral or equivalent)

• for the regional breakdown: Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) reference year 2016 - for the EU Member States; and Statistical Regions for Candidate countries and EFTA countries, by country (version 2016) - for EFTA and candidate countries; collected and published at NUTS-1 level and country level

The SES covers enterprises / local units with at least 10 employees and all economic activities defined in NACE Rev. 2 sections B to N and P to S.

The transmission of data covering small enterprises (below 10 employees) and enterprises belonging to NACE Rev. 2 section O is optional.

Employees are all persons who have a direct employment contract with the enterprise or local unit and receive remuneration, irrespective of the type of work performed, the number of hours worked (full or part-time), and the duration of the contract (fixed or indefinite).

Mean annual gross earnings also cover all 'non-standard payments', i.e. payments not occurring in each pay period, such as 13th or 14th-month payments, holiday bonuses, quarterly or annual company bonuses, and annual payments in kind.

Mean monthly gross earnings in the reference month cover remuneration in cash paid before any tax deductions and social security contributions payable by wage earners and retained by the employer, and are restricted to gross earnings which are paid in each pay period during the reference month.

Mean hourly gross earnings are defined as gross earnings in the reference month divided by the number of hours paid during the same period.

The number of hours paid includes all normal and overtime hours worked and remunerated by the employer during the reference month. Hours not worked but nevertheless paid are counted as 'paid hours' (e.g. for annual leave, public holidays, paid sick leave, paid vocational training, paid special leave, etc.).

For further details on the variables collected in SES (in particular the definitions) please consult Council Regulation (EC) No 530/1999 concerning structural statistics on earnings and on labour costs, and Commission Regulation (EC) No 1738/2005 amending Regulation (EC) No 1916/2000.

The compilation of structural statistics on earnings is based on local units and/ or enterprises, as defined in Council Regulation (EEC) No 696/93, and provides information on employees in enterprises with 10 or more employees classified by size and economic activity. Information for employees in enterprises with fewer than 10 employees is optional.

The statistics cover all activities defined in NACE Rev. 2 sections B to S (excluding O) for enterprises with at least 10 employees.

The SES 2018 statistics refer to enterprises with at least 10 employees in the areas of economic activities defined by NACE Rev. 2 sections B to S excluding O.

The inclusion of NACE section O is optional, as well as the inclusion of enterprises with less than 10 employees. 

The data cover the EU-Member States, EFTA, and candidate countries.

EU/ EA aggregates are available for EU27 (EU27_2020 European Union - 27 countries (from 2020); EU27_2007 European Union - 27 countries (2007-2013)) , EU28, EA19, EA18 and EA17.

The reference year is equal to the calendar year (2018).

The reference month is October for the majority of the countries. The choice of another month is accepted as long as the month is justified as being representative; for details please consult national quality reports

Not applicable.

The participating countries send data collected in the four-yearly Structure of Earnings Survey to Eurostat according to:

Council Regulation (EC) No 530/1999 of 9 March 1999 concerning structural statistics on earnings and on labour costs; 

Commission Regulation (EC) No 1738/2005 of 21 October 2005 amending Regulation (EC) No 1916/2000 as regards the definition and transmission of information on the structure of earnings; 

Not applicable.

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.

In the SES, information about individual entities (employees and enterprises) is collected. The safety of these microdata has to be guaranteed to make sure that individual entities cannot be recognised through inspection of released data. The goal of disclosure control is to disseminate statistical information in such a way that individual information is sufficiently protected against recognition of the subjects to which it refers, while at the same time providing as much information as possible.

Only tabular data have therefore been published. In order to limit the disclosure risk of these tables the following measures have been applied:

• Region: restricted to the national level; only a limited number of indicators are published at NUTS-1 level - mean hourly earnings, mean annual earnings, 
• Economic activity: restricted to NACE Rev. 2, one digit level;
• Size of the enterprise: published in size classes of employee numbers; 1-9, 10-49, 50-249, 250-499, 500-999 and 1000 or more
• Age: restricted to 5 size classes (less than 30 years, 30-39 years, 40-49 years, 50-59 years, 60+ years);
• Occupation published at ISCO-08, one digit level.

The following two primary confidentiality rules are applied to SES data:

- minimum frequency rule;

- dominance rule

As additional protection of the data from recalculation secondary confidentiality rule is also applied.

There is no fixed release calendar of SES data.

The data is sent to Eurostat 18 months after the end of the reference period and the country data is disseminated in Eurobase datasets approximately 20 months after the reference period.

Not applicable.

In line with the Community legal framework and the European Statistics Code of Practice Eurostat disseminates European statistics on Eurostat's website (see item 10 - 'Accessibility and clarity') respecting professional independence and in an objective, the professional and transparent manner in which all users are treated equitably. The detailed arrangements are governed by the Eurostat protocol on impartial access to Eurostat data for users.

According to internal Eurostats' dissemination strategy News Releases for data that are not the principal European economic indicators (PEEI) are no longer disseminated (since 2020).

News Releases for non-PEEI data are now replaced by News items (available in the 'What's new?' section of Eurostat's web page).

The following News Items based on SES 2018 data were published:

• 15% of all EU employees are low-wage earners
• Median gross hourly earnings show large variations between Member States
• How do earnings vary across the EU?
• Hourly earnings vary widely across occupations

See 10.1. 

Please consult the free online database

For details on how to access microdata please consult the dedicated web page on the following link:  Access to SES microdata.

Not applicable.

Please consult Implementing arrangements for SES 2018 in the annex of this metadata file.

All countries who submit this data to Eurostat are also asked by EU regulation to send a quality report by the end of 2020.

National quality reports are published once validated. A synthesis of quality reports will be released in the annex of this metadata file.

According to Regulation (EC) 530/1999 national authorities shall ensure that the results reflect the true situation of the total population of units with a sufficient degree of representativity. National authorities are therefore obliged to provide a Quality Report containing all relevant information to enable the quality of the statistics to be evaluated.

For more details please refer to national quality reports.

Upon transmission to Eurostat, SES microdata are checked for completeness and consistency.

Among others, the most important and frequent users of SES are mainly; research centers, universities, and students, the media, social partners and trade unions, private companies, national public institutions as well as international institutions. The large sample size of the SES makes it a unique source of information in which individual earnings can be linked with the characteristics of individual employees (sex, age, education level etc.) as well as to the characteristics of the enterprise they work for (economic sector, size of the enterprise, location etc.).

The SES tables published on Eurostat’s website are considered to be well followed by our users.

Datasets providing information on earnings by sex, economic activity, and collective pay agreement are the most looked for, with information on earnings by level of education and geographic location to a lower extent.

Refer to the national quality reports.

In the majority of the countries, a two-stage stratified sample technique is adopted; first, a random sample of enterprises / local units, followed by a sample of employees within the selected enterprise / local unit. 

For further details, refer to the national quality reports.

Please consult the national quality reports.

Please consult the national quality reports.

Please consult the national quality reports.

Please consult the national quality reports.

Comparability of the SES data across national borders may be affected by the use of different observation units and definitions, methods or classification schemes, i.e. by deviations between national and community concepts. Geographic comparability may also be affected by new regional classification (NUTS).

For the info on geographical comparability, refer to the national quality reports.

Comparability over time may be affected by new definitions and classifications used in coding the SES data (NACE, NUTS, ISCED, ISCO).

In the case of hourly earnings, which in most countries are derived from the monthly earnings divided by the total hours actually paid in the reference month (October), comparability over time may be distorted due to changes in the number of working days in the reference month for the reference year.

For an overview on comparability over time, refer to the national quality reports.

Please consult the national quality reports.

Please consult the national quality reports.

Apart from adjustments following internal checks, the data are accepted directly as communicated by the NSI. Revisions only occur rarely.

If necessary, after running a series of data validation checks, countries are asked to revise their data until it is considered fit for publishing.

The data collection for the Structure of Earnings Survey can be obtained from 'tailor-made' questionnaires, existing surveys, administrative data or a combination of such sources, which provide the equivalent information. While accepting a degree of flexibility in the means employed for collecting the survey data, the information obtained must be of acceptable quality and be comparable between European countries.

Four-yearly.

The national surveys are generally conducted on the basis of a two-stage random sampling approach of enterprises or local units (first stage) and employees (second stage).

Data validation consists of global checks and plausibility checks. Global checks are necessary to ensure that complete data is received for microdata records. For each country, all microdata records should contain data for all mandatory variables. Missing mandatory data or codes are not accepted. Concerning optional variables, each country decides which of these it is able to supply. Furthermore, plausibility checks on all variables were done to ensure that the data are reasonable and consistent with other variables. Possible deviations are reported by countries in their national Quality Report transmitted to Eurostat. Further details on the plausibility checks implemented by Eurostat are provided in the implementing arrangements document which is approved and sent to all countries prior to each round (Validation level 2), see the attached document in the annex.

EU aggregates are compiled, with the number of employees per country being the weighting factor for each individual country.

Not applicable.