At the beginning of the nineties, a need emerged to monitor development of the wage level of individual occupations which would suitably supplement the wage statistics of that time. Following an agreement with the top employers' and trade unions' bodies of the Czech Republic, the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs managed to outline the principles and missions of the Average Earnings Information System (ISPV). The Czech Statistical Office (CZSO) and representatives from the world of science participated in the development of the system. These days, ISPV is the only official source of information about the wage level of individual occupations in the Czech Republic. In order to analyse the wage structure, results from the ISPV survey are used by the CZSO and Eurostat, among others.
As of its commencement, the ISPV survey has been developing so that it keeps meeting its main objective, i.e. providing accurate information about earnings and their structure, and worked and non-worked hours of employees in the Czech Republic. The ISPV also reacts to the latest trends in the field of statistical surveys and hence another objective is to reduce the demands on the respondents and to support mutual interconnection of the systems of the MoLSA (the Czech Social Security Administration and the ISPV), the CZSO (earnings surveys) and the Ministry of Finance (the Salary Information System). The following section describes the milestones in the ISPV development from the survey commencement in 1992 up to the present day.
1992 - The pilot survey of the ISPV took place in 1992. Initially, it was a separate departmental statistical survey based on a quarterly survey of the average hourly earnings of employees according to individual professions. The survey was based on recruitment of respondents on a voluntary basis. The initial sample of economic subjects providing data about their employees into the system was built up by targeted selection in order to get important representants from individual sectors of economic activity.
1993 - In 1993, selection of secondary sampling units (i.e. random selection of employees from large organizations in order to enhance the representativeness of results by occupations) was applied for the first time. Outputs for professions were supplemented with results according to the classification of occupations KZAM.
1994 - In 1994, the extension of the sample (reporting units) was carried out on the basis of the quota sampling of organizations according to the OKEC section (Classification of Economic Activities category), districts (region) and organization size (number of employees category). Selection and recruitment of organizations from the non-manufacturing sector started this year.
1995 - In 1995, the random sample of new respondents within the quotas region-field was introduced.
1996 - Thanks to gradual improvement of the quality of the results, the number of the system users increased and it became necessary to change the survey status. Since 1996, ISPV has become a part of the Statistical Surveys Programme of the Czech Statistical Office that is published in the Collection of Laws for the relevant calendar year (still as a departmental statistical survey of MoLSA). Following the inclusion of ISPV into the Statistical Surveys Programme of the CZSO, the reporting units are under a statutory obligation to provide the input data.
1997 - In 1997, a testing survey of the Regional Earnings Statistics (RSCP) was carried out for five regions.
1998 - In 1998, the successful testing survey was followed by implementation of monitoring of the earnings level in regions under the name Regional Earnings Statistics (RSCP). Since that year, RSCP has been providing a detailed summary of differences between wage levels in individual regions and thereby has been supplementing the ISPV surveys. In the same year, the input sentence was extended as one started to survey the gross wage (including its structure) and worked hours. The first results were published in an extended version of the classification of occupations KZAM-R. In 1998, ISPV results were used for, among other things, CZSO's Structure of Earnings Survey (SES).
1999 - In 1999, data from the non-business sphere were processed for the first time.
2000 – In 2000, CZSO selected for the ISPV survey a representative sample of 2,000 economic operators from the whole national economy who were engaged in the survey for the subsequent 2 years. This selection substantially improved the quality of ISPV results.
2002 - In 2002, a new uniform data structure (S2002) was introduced for the business and non-business sphere.
2003 - In 2003, changes were introduced which ensured greater representativeness of ISPV results – introduction of methods of probability sample, a rotating panel and weighing of results in the business sphere. In 2003, results were processed for the Structure of Earnings Survey for 2002 as required by Eurostat. Those results were supported by a report on quality of the national version of this survey.
2004 - In 2004, additional selection of companies with more than 250 employees in the business sphere started, namely due to the planned census survey of those operators from the year 2007. In addition, this was the year of a test takeover of data for the non-business sphere from the Salary Information System (ISP) run by the Ministry of Finance of the Czech Republic.
2006 - In 2006, the structure of the input data (S2006) for the ISPV survey was changed and extended.
2007 - In 2007, the pilot study of calculation of the employee structure in the Czech Republic was carried out, thanks to which the employee support for 2006 was specified using the data from the corporate reporting of CZSO. The model for estimating the numbers of employees in the non-business sphere and salary development on the basis of the reported and accounted for salary components became more precise. In 2007, respondents with 250 and more employees were globally included into the ISPV survey. Last but not least, local and internet versions of the data collection program were developed in 2007 and implemented subsequently. Both versions of the program contributed to greater comfort of the respondents during preparation of the input data.
2008 - In 2008, closer cooperation with CZSO was established due to the necessary harmonization of the earnings surveys of MoLSA and CZSO. The first harmonization step was the recruitment of respondents from the sector of natural persons - entrepreneurs with 10 and more employees.
2009 - In 2009, the structure of sent data changed (S2009). The aim of this change was in particular to get adjusted to the new wage legislation, to allow harmonization of the wage statistics of CZSO and MoLSA and thereby reduce the burden on the respondents. The change of structure was also incorporated in the programs for data collection, control and sending. The ISPV portal was created and set off in 2009, in particular as a support for respondents. In addition to the information about the ISPV survey, this portal allows access to the current as well as older survey results, including those of the Regional Earnings Statistics.
2011 - In 2011, several radical changes were made in ISPV. In addition to the change of periodicity and contents of the result publications, harmonization of the ISPV and CZSO methodologies was completed; it resulted in, among other things, extension of the ISPV set by employees of formerly unmonitored operators and hence it made it possible to publish the estimated weighed number of employees by all monitored types of sorting. In addition, a transfer occurred in 2011 from the original classification of occupations KZAM-R to a new classification CZ-ISCO, which is connected also with the changed structure of the input data (S2011). In 2011, the quality of the estimated gross monthly wage median was published for the first time by job subgroups and categories. The last change was making the names of both spheres more accurate, i.e. in 2011, the name wage sphere replaced the business sphere and the name salary sphere replaced the non-business sphere. You can find a detailed description of changes in 2011 here.
2012 - In 2012, the structure of the input data changed because of the transfer from the original classification of occupations KZAM-R (item ZAMEST) to a new classification CZ-ISCO (item CZISCO).