Abstract

Since the entry into force of the Integrated European Social Statistics Framework Regulation (IESS FR), some changes were made to the wage variable included in the Labour Force Survey from reference year 2021 on. On the one hand the definition of the concept has changed and on the other the transmission period for this specific variable has been modified. This allows for the possibility of using administrative data for the derivation of the concept. At the same time, there have been great improvements in Belgium with respect to the availability of administrative data in the field of both social security as well as tax registers.
In the presentation, we will describe the approach Statistics Belgium has chosen for the derivation of the new INCGROSS variable in the LFS on the basis of administrative data sources. We will discuss the available sources and their advantages or disadvantages with respect to the purpose of using them for the derivation of the INCGROSS variable. Next, we will focus on some particular problem areas, such as the lack of information on wages from people working abroad and people working for international institutions and finally, we will also describe the imputation method we used for the imputation of a remaining proportion of missing values.