What is the National Employment Survey?
The Central Statistics Office is conducting a National Employment Survey (NES) covering all sectors of the economy. This major survey replaces the Structure of Earnings Survey which was last carried out in 1996.
The NES will provide much-needed information on the distribution of individual employee earnings and on the factors which influence earnings levels. It will provide results which will be broken down by sector, region, occupation, age, sex, educational attainment, family status as well as many other important individual employee circumstances. It will also show comparisons across economic sectors.
What's involved?
Firstly, the Employer selected to participate in the NES is requested to supply a sample of employee names. The survey will be conducted in two parts:
Part A: The Employer is required to complete a questionnaire requesting some fairly basic organisational details and practices, and also certain limited payroll-type information for the sample of employees.
Click here for an electronic version of the Employer Questionnaire(Excel 252KB)
Click here for a glossary of occupations to assist the employer in answering question 5(Word 165KB)
Click here for Employee Benefits Calculator for assistance in the completion of Q.6
(Excel 228KB)
The employee details will relate to gross earnings in a pay period (March 2003) together with hours worked in that period, as well as annual earnings for the year 2002. (For this reason the survey will be timed to follow the period in which P60's would normally be compiled.) The CSO aims to carry out this survey with minimal intrusion on your normal activities.
Part B: A brief Employee Questionnaire will be circulated to each of these employees. This questionnaire is relatively simple to complete, as the questions are mainly of the tick-box variety. The employer will NOT collect these questionnaires, for reasons of confidentiality. Instead, they will be returned in individual postage paid envelopes, which will be distributed with the questionnaires.
Is it compulsory?
The NES is being conducted under Statutory Instrument Number 39, of 2003, which makes it compulsory to complete and return the questionnaires.
Is my return confidential?
Yes. Under the 1993 Statistics Act, the CSO is obliged to treat all information received as confidential. Under no circumstances will any return (employer or employee) be made available to any Government Department, Agency or outside organisation.
Want more information?
For further information on the NES 2003 please contact:
National Employment Survey Section
Central Statistics Office
Skehard Road
Cork
Telephone: LoCall 1890 313 414
Mary Smyth@ 5309
Maria Crowley@ 5016
Gerard Doolan@ 5130
Mary Byrnes@ 5057
Fax: 021 453 5294 or 021 453 5369
E-mail: nes@cso.ie