Earnings in municipalities and county authorities, 1 December 2014

In the statistics, wages and salaries refer only to cash payments from employer to employee for work rendered. The statistics hence do not include payment in kind, insurance or non-taxable expense allowances and the like.

Monthly earnings

Gross monthly earnings. Includes basic salaries, variable additional allowances and bonuses. Overtime pay is not included.

Basic monthly salary

Basic monthly salary is the actual payment at the time of the census, and is often described as salary on a scale or regular basic wage. Qualification/skills allowances and other regular personal allowances are included. Wages or salaries can be paid per hour, week, fortnight or month.

Variable additional allowances

Variable additional allowances are associated with special duties, and the figure given is a calculated average per month for the period 1 January to the time of the census. Included are allowances such as shift allowance, allowances for working evenings and nights, call-out allowance, dirty conditions allowance, offshore allowance and other allowances that occur irregularly.

Bonuses

This item includes allowances usually not connected with specific duties and where the payments occur irregularly with respect to the period in which they are earned or to which they apply. Types of payments include commissions, profit sharing, production allowance and gratuities, and are a calculated average per month for the period from the 4th quarter of the previous year to the time of the census.

Overtime pay

Overtime pay covers the sum of cash compensation for work carried out beyond contractual working hours, and is a calculated average per month over the period 1 January to the time of the census.

Estimated annual earnings

Annual earnings are an estimate for 12 months of the calendar year and are based on the monthly earnings at the census time. Includes basic paid wages and salaries, variable additional allowances, bonuses, but does not include holiday pay supplement and overtime pay.

Full-time and part time

Information is collected on all employees regardless of contractual working hours. Employees with a contractual 33 hours or more per week are regarded as full-time employees. Employees in municipalities, in publicly maintained schools and central government are regarded as full-time employees when engaged in a 100 per cent occupation. Employees with less than 33 hours work-time per week or engaged in an occupation of less than 100 per cent are defined as part-time employees.

Full-time equivalents

In the wage statistics employees with less than 33 hours work-time per week or engaged in an occupation of less than 100 per cent are defined as part-time employees. To be able to compare earnings for full-time and part-time employees the earnings for a part-time employee is recalculated to the earnings a full-time employee would receive. This is done by using the ratio of the working hours for each part-time employee and the average working hours for full-time employees in the industry as the factor of recalculation. Monthly earnings per full-time equivalent for part-time employees may then be put together with monthly earnings for full-time employees and thus it is made possible to calculate average monthly earnings for all employees.

Contractual working hours

Contractual working hours is defined as the contractual number of working hours per week, excluding meal breaks. No deductions are made for absences due to holiday, illness, leave of absence or the like. For employees with working hours that varies from one week to another, the average number of hours per week is reported for the year or for the last month.

Age and sex

The national identity number indicates age and sex.

Industrial classification.

A key component of the wage statistics is classification by industry in accordance with the Standard Industrial Classification (SN 2007), which is the Norwegian version of the new international Standard Industrial Classification (SIC94). Standard Industrial Classfication (SN2007) .

Classification of occupation.

The Standard Classification of Occupation (C521), which is the Norwegian version of the International Standard Classification of Occupation (ISCO-88), is used in the statistics. This set of occupation codes is established throughout the wage statistics, either through direct input or by encoding from other occupation codes.

More information on the Standard Classification of Occupation (C521) .

Education classification.

Education levels are obtained from the register of the Population’s Highest Level of Education (BHU). The classification is by the length of education according to the Standard for Educational Classification.

More information about the Standard Education Classification .