XN000022-1997-04-23 — Page 66

(ii)&(iii)

(b)

(c)

હ

49

Statistics on the rates of change in the nominal and real wage indices over the past three years, broken down by main sector and by broad occupational group, are given in Tables 1 and 2 respectively.

Statistics on the rates of change in the nominal and real indices of average payroll, broken down by main sector, are given in Tables 3 and 4 respectively.

Statistics are not available specifically on the proportion of overtime pay in total payroll. To simplify the data collection process within the limit of resources and also having due regard to the reporting burden on employers, at present the Census and Statistics Department requires employers to report on the payroll data with a broad delineation into the regular and irregular components only.

Statistics on the proportion of the irregular component in the total payroll, analysed by major sector, are given in Table 5.

Data on overtime work have been collected only from a special topic enquiry conducted via the General Household Survey during October-November 1996. The statistics relate to the total number of working hours of employees and their overtime worked, analysed by main sector and by main occupational group. These statistics are shown in Table 6. It shows that the transport, storage and communications sector, as well as the manufacturing sector had overtime work more frequently than the other sectors during the survey period.

Idicated in (a)(ii) above, a further breakdown of the irregular component of total payroll by form of payment is not available. Table 5 nevertheless shows that employees in the financing, insurance, real estate and business services sector, as well as those in the transport, storage and communications sector had a greater proportion of their payroll in the form of irregular earnings than those in the other sectors in 1996.

The Census and Statistics Department will continue to consider the possibility of obtaining finer breakdowns of the payroll data, in the light of demand for such additional data, but also necessarily having regard to the extra reporting burden on employers and the extra cost of collecting the data.