Distribution of earnings for full-time employees by economic activity, occupational group and sex 2014-2022

Preliminary numbers.
Earnings are the remuneration an employee gets from the employer in exchange for labour or services.
Earnings are monthly earnings in thousand ISK.
Paid hours are monthly hours paid.
Data are based on the Icelandic Survey on Wages, Earnings and Labour Cost which is a sample survey.
Data are based on the following economic activities in the private sector: Manufacturing (C), Electricity, gas, steam, and air conditioning supply (D), Water supply; sewerage, waste management and remediation activities (E), Construction (F), Wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles (G), Transportation and storage (H), Information and communication (J), Financial and insurance activities (K). In the economic activity J small enterprises and enterprises in the IT business are missing.
In 2018 the economic activity Accommodation and food services (I) was added to the dataset. When comparing years it has to be kept in mind that the dataset has changed.
The economic activities Public administration and defence; compulsory social security (O), Education (P), and Human health and social work activities (Q) are only based on employees in the public sector. In O employees in the public sector are about 95% of the population, in P about 90% and 80% in Q. Employees in the public sector working in other economic activities are included in the dataset, most working in Arts, entertainment and recreation (R). A breakdown is not published for R as a sample from the private sector (about 50%) is missing.
Full-time employees are defined as employees whose total daytime hours are equal or exceed 90% of contractual working hours. Contractual working hours vary between collective agreements but are usually between 159.3 and 173.3 hours. It is worth mentioning that the shortening of the work week generally came into force for the private sector in 2020 but in 2021 for the public administration. See https://statice.is/publications/news-archive/wages-and-income/earnings-2020/
A minimum of 50 employees in 3 legal units are required in order to publish data on sub-groups.
Data is based on employees 18 years and older in the survey data.

Economic activity

Economic activities follow the Ísat08 classification (based on Nace rev.2.2).

Occupational group

Occupational groups follow the Ístarf95 classification (based on ISCO-88). In addition there are two occupational groups: Craft workers, defined as those belonging to occupational groups 7, 8 and 9 and having 5th digit (Icelandic addition) 2 and 3 (skilled craft workers and skilled foremen); general, machine and specialized workers, defined as those belonging to occupational groups 7, 8 and 9 and having the 5th digit 0 and 1 (general workers, and foremen).

Unit

The values show the division between percentiles, e.g. 50% of employees has lower earnings then the value in the 50% column.

Year

2018

In 2018 the economic activity Accommodation and food services (I) was added to the dataset. This has to be kept in mind when comparing data between years as changes between years can partly be caused by different composition of the dataset.

Economic activity

Information and communication (J)

Small enterprises and enterprises in the IT business are missing.

Public administration and defence; compulsory social sec. (O)

Only employees in the public sector are covered.

Education (P)

Only employees in the public sector are covered.

Human health and social work activities (Q)

Only employees in the public sector are covered.

Earnings and working hours

Basic earnings

Basic earnings are the remuneration for regular daytime working hours without any supplements.
In some cases employees have fixed-wage contracts and in those instances all earnings are part of basic earnings as the pay-roll systems do not record overtime hours. Fixed-wage contracts can be found in all occupational groups, but they are especially common among managers and specialists.

Regular earnings

Regular earnings are the remuneration for regular working hours that is ordinary working hours according to collective agreements, both daytime and shift-work hours.
When comparing regular earnings between occupations and occupational groups it has to be kept in mind that in the cases of fixed-wage contracts or fixed overtime payments, overtime hours are not recorded in the pay-roll system and thus they are included in the regular earnings.

Total regular earnings

Total regular earnings are the total remuneration per month including overtime.

Total earnings

Total earnings are the total remuneration per month including piece work, irregular bonuses and various other irregular payments, excluding payments in kind.

Hours paid

Hours paid are monthly working hours for full-time employees, whether being daytime, shift-work, piece work or overtime hours. To obtain weekly hours the hours paid are divided by (52/12).
Hours paid are usually a good estimator of hours worked. However in some occupational groups, for example among managers and professionals, fixed-wage contracts are common. Thus, employees do not get paid overtime, and their working hours might be underestimated. In other cases paid hours overestimate hours worked e.g. hours paid due to sickness or holidays and in some instances overtime hours are used instead of bonuses but the hours are not worked.

Unit

Decile share ratio

The decile share ratio is the ratio between the total sums of earnings by employees in the 10th decile divided by the total sum of earnings by employees in the 1st decile.

Qartile share ratio

The quartile share ratio is the ratio between the total sum of earnings by employees in the fourth quartile divided by the total sum of earnings by employees in the first quartile.

Perc. under the mean

Percentage of employees receiving salaries under the mean.

Observations

Number of observations in the dataset.

Weighted bservations

Weighted number of observations in the dataset. The weight is based on the number of observations and the ISWEL weight. Each employee gets the weight of the employer and a weight based on number of months worked. This is necessary in order to let the sample reflect the population that is employees working for employers with 10 or more employees.