© Marcel Crozet / ILO

Statistics on wages

Table of Contents

Introduction

Access to employment for all is a key goal of policymakers around the globe. Employment is indeed a core element of our livelihoods and lives. However, having a job is no guarantee of a decent living: job quality is required as well. Working conditions on the job will determine to a great extent our living conditions.

Remuneration is a crucial aspect of working conditions. Decent work is productive work which provides workers with adequate earnings, ensuring satisfactory living conditions for workers and their families. At the same time, monitoring the evolution of wages and earnings provides insights into the extent to which workers benefit from gains in productivity.

The objective of non-discrimination and equal treatment in employment implies that workers should receive equal pay for work of equal value. Disaggregated data for wages statistics serve to assess the extent to which this is true.

Data catalogue

Methods

Decent Work and the Sustainable Development Goals: A Guidebook on SDG Labour Market Indicators

This Guidebook provides a detailed overview of the labour market indicators included in the Sustainable Development Goals Global Indicator Framework. It is intended to serve as a manual of best practices for calculating and interpreting the SDG labour market indicators, with a view to monitoring progress made at the national and international levels towards the achievement of the SDGs.

Resolution concerning an integrated system of wages statistics

Adopted by the 12th ICLS (1973), this resolution revises, broadens and integrates the prior standards in order to provide guidelines for the production of comprehensive and mutually consistent statistics of wages (including salaries) and the need to co-ordinate these statistics with other economic and social statistics.

Publications

Note: Many publications are available only in English. If available in other languages, a new page will open displaying the options on the right. 

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Use the search box and filters above the table

Use the search box to enter key words; use quotes around your term for better results. Available filters differ depending on the catalogue. Selecting a frequency allows users to find monthly, quarterly, or annual indicators. While all indicators are available for annual periods, only a subset are available as monthly or quarterly. 

Options to access data

Data Explorer

This tool provides an intuitive interface to filter the selection, pivot the table, calculate distributions and growth rates, and export data into various formats.

Excel summary

Data available in the Excel summary files are for indicators only (not available for countries or regions) for selected classification items for 2010 onward for annual data and 2018 onward for short-term indicators. For historical data or additional classifications, either use the Data Explorer or download the CSV file. 

Country profiles

Available in the country catalogue only, this option takes users to the country profiles page with the selected country pre-filtered in the table. Highlighting the latest year available for key indicators, this is a subset of the available data for a given country.

Zipped csv (gz)

Download a zipped CSV file (gzip) to get data in bulk. These files contain only codes. Download the dictionary with labels here

There are other options to access data in the data tools section

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