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Introduction

The European Structure of Earnings Survey (SES) is a 4-yearly survey providing detailed information on renumeration of employees, their individual characteristics and the enterprise to which they belong. The SES outcome represents an uniquely rich data source on gross earnings in Europe which is increasingly important for monitoring economic growth and social cohesion.

This Statistics in Focus aims at taking a first glance at the SES 2002 results which were released by Eurostat in June 2005. The SES 2002 provided data for approximately 7.9 million employees in enterprises with at least 10 employees in "Industry and services" (sections C to K of the economic activity classification scheme NACE. Eurostat received by April 2005 data from 28 countries: 24 out of the current 25 Member States (all except Malta), the Acceding Countries Bulgaria and Romania as well as Iceland and Norway. The data refer to 2002, were collected by the national statistical offices in 2003 and processed during 2004. The German data relate to 2001 and were processed in 2003. The averages referring to EU-25, EU-15 and the NMS (today´s EU, "old" EU and new Member States, respectively) as well as to the euro-zone EZ are weighted averages including only those countries for which national data are available. More information on coverage of the survey, definitions or abbreviations of countries and economic activities is presented in the Methodological Notes.