Industrial: Non-agricultural industries except national postal activities, central banking, public administration and defense and compulsory social security, public education services, public medical, extra territorial organizations and bodies.

Establishments: Non-agricultural establishments employing 20 persons or more.

Persons: Rank and file workers.

Employment: refers to persons who worked or received pay during the reference quarter. This includes the following:
Working Owners - owners who are actively engaged in the management of the establishment but do not receive regular pay;
Unpaid Family Workers - persons working without pay for at least 1/3 of the working time normal to the establishment; and
Paid Officials and Workers - full-time/part-time workers; employees on paid leaves (e.g. sick/vacation/maternity/holiday/study leave); and employees working away from the establishment but paid by and under the control of the establishment.
Excluded are workers hired through contractor/agency.

Rank and File Workers: refer to workers who do not fall within the managerial or supervisory classification of employees. They are classified according to employment status as follows:
Regular Workers - are workers hired to perform activities that are usually necessary or desirable in the usual business or trade of the employer and usually worked on permanent status.
Non-regular Workers - are workers hired for fixed or specific project or undertaking or services performed which is seasonal in nature. These include casual workers, seasonal workers, contractual/project-based workers, paid apprentices/trainees and the like.

Labor Turnover:
New Hires (Accessions) - refer to permanent or temporary additions to employment in the establishment due to a) expansion of business activity and b) replacement of separated workers and employment resulting from changes in methods/technology of production or service.
Separations - refer to terminations of employment in the establishment due to a) quits or terminations initiated by the employees for any reason except retirement and b) layoffs or terminations initiated by the employers due to economic/non-economic reasons and dismissals due to misconduct, incompetence of employees, etc.

Job Vacancies: refer to unfilled job openings which are immediately available for filling and for which active recruitment steps are being taken anytime during the reference quarter.

Hours of Work:
Hours Actually Worked Excluding Overtime - refer to hours actually worked on ordinary working days exclusive of overtime and hours worked during rest days, regular holidays and special days. These include rest periods or coffee breaks running from five (5) to twenty (20) minutes. These exclude non-compensable meal breaks.
Total Overtime Hours - refer to a) hours worked beyond regular hours on ordinary working days; and b) total hours worked when workers are required to work during their rest days, regular holidays and special days.

Earnings: cover all payments in cash or in kind before deductions for withholding taxes, employees' contributions to SSS/GSIS, PhilHealth, PAG-IBIG and other obligations of employees.
Wages and Salaries - refer to payments in cash or in kind for work done including overtime, regular allowances/incentive pay and/or paid leaves.
Bonuses and Gratuities - refer to Christmas bonus, 13^th month pay, profit sharing bonuses and similar payments paid at irregular intervals.

Industrial: The industry classification is based on the 1994 Philippine Standard Industrial Classification (PSIC). It was patterned after the International Standard Industrial Classification (ISIC), Rev. 3 of the United Nations, up to the 4-digit level, but with modifications to suit national situations and circumstances.

Employment size: The classification of establishments according to employment size is based on the average total employment, e.g. 20-49, 50-199 and 200 and over.

Others: Earnings and job vacancies are categorized according to employment status, e.g. regular and non-regular workers.

Survey universe/Sample frame: The sampling frame used for the survey was taken from the List of Establishments of the National Statistics Office. On a partial basis, this is regularly updated based on the responses to other surveys of the BLES and establishment reports on retrenchments and closures submitted to the Regional Offices of the Department of Labor and Employment and other establishment lists.

Sample design: Establishments are stratified by region and 1-digit industry level and by employment size except for manufacturing which is at 3-digit industry level. Establishments with average total employment of 200 and over are completely enumerated while those with average total employment of 20 to 199 were selected using simple random sampling. It covers on a 15 percent basis, establishments employing 20 to 49 and on a 30 percent basis, establishments employing 50 to 199. At least two establishments are selected for each cell while complete enumeration is done for a cell with only one establishment.

The design utilizes two types of samples, namely: a) the normal sample; and b) the enhanced sample. The normal sample is drawn as described above. On the other hand, the enhanced sample covers all non-agricultural establishments with 50 or more workers in 22 specific industries that are considered critical such as those which are export-oriented and deregulated. Specifically, these industries are as follows:

1. Selected manufacturing (textiles; wearing apparel; refined petroleum products; electronic valves and tubes; and semi-conductor devices and other electronic components);
2. Selected communications (telephone service; facsimile/telefax service; teleservice, and telecommunications services, n.e.c.);
3. Selected banking institutions (expanded commercial banking; regular commercial banking; savings and mortgage banking; private development banking; regular rural banking; and cooperative rural banking); and
4. Selected real estate, renting and business activities (real estate buying, developing, subdividing and selling; renting of office machinery and equipment including computers; hardware consultancy; software consultancy and supply; software development; data processing/conversion services; and maintenance and repair of office accounting and computing machinery).

Prior to 1998, the EHES adopted the sampling design of the Quarterly Survey of Establishments now Quarterly Survey of Philippine Business and Industry of the National Statistics Office which was a stratified simple random sample survey of non-agricultural establishments with actual total engaged of 20 persons or more. It covered on a hundred percent basis, establishments employing 100 or more workers; on a 25 percent basis, establishments with employment of 50 to 99; and on a 10 percent basis, establishments with 20 to 49 workers. A minimum of 3 and a maximum of 10 samples in each cell were taken. If the number of establishments for a particular cell is three (3) or less, all were taken as samples.

Sample size: For First Semester 2002 EHES, the sample size is 4,637 of which 3,474 were found to be eligible sampling units.

Survey questionnaire: The questionnaire is made up of several parts, i.e.

Cover page - contains information on the name and address of the establishment, main economic activity, major product/s, goods or services provided, purpose of the survey and coverage.

Explanatory notes - Definition of terms on the items of information required to be filled-up.

Items of information - Items of information are on employment, labor turnover, existing job vacancies, hours of work of rank and file workers and earnings of rank and file.

Additional information - Items of inquiry may vary in every survey round. For First Semester 2002, inquiry on employment of specific group of workers (i.e. Agency-hired workers; piece-rated workers; task or "pakyao" workers; part-time workers; casual workers, contractual workers and commission workers) was included.

Survey personnel - this portion is allocated for the contact person in the establishment, names of personnel involved in collection, editing and review of each questionnaire and dates when the activities were completed; and

Substitution of sampling units:There is no substitution of sampling units.

Microsoft Access is used for data encoding and generation of validation prooflists. After validation based on the prooflists and Rejection List, a conversion program using SPSS is executed to generate the output tables.

• Labor turnover rates (accessions and separations)
• Job vacancies for regular and non-regular workers
• Average weekly hours actually worked of rank and file workers
• Monthly average wages, salaries and allowances of regular and non-regular workers
• Average annual bonuses and gratuities of regular and non-regular workers

Estimates of totals are obtained by simple expansion, i.e. by multiplying the sample values at the cell level (region, industry and employment size) by the corresponding blowing-up factor which is the ratio of the eligible population of establishments to the number of responding establishments.

While quarterly data are generated for average wages and salaries and hours actually worked of rank and file workers, these are divided by three (3) and thirteen respectively to derive the monthly and weekly equivalents for publication purposes.

Data on bonuses and gratuities are published annually since these are not given to workers on a quarterly basis.

Other bias: No adjustments are made.

Use of benchmark data: No benchmark data is used.

Use of other surveys: No other survey data are used.

Seasonal variations: Not applicable.

Sampling error/Sampling variance: To measure standard errors, the variance estimation for totals and ratios under stratified random sampling were used. The coefficients of variations of estimates for labor turnover rates, job vacancies, average hours worked, average earnings (wages and salaries, and bonuses and gratuities) are available.

Non-response rate: For first semester 2002 EHES, the non-response rate in terms of eligible sampling units was 20.5 percent.

Non-sampling errors: These may occur due to inaccuracies in reporting by establishments and enumerators, mistakes in coding, editing and data entry. However, efforts are made to reduce non-sampling errors by careful design of the questionnaire, intensive training of survey personnel, linkages with key informants (employers’ groups) and through adoption and documentation of efficient operating procedures.

Conformity with other sources: The survey results are checked against related data of the Annual Survey of Philippine Business and Industry or the Quarterly Survey of Philippine Business and Industry (formerly Quarterly Survey of Establishments) of the National Statistics Office.

Estimates for non-survey years: Not relevant

In 1988, a special study funded by the National Statistical Coordination Board entitled, "Improvement of Client-Based Statistics on Labor and Employment," was undertaken. Among others, the study recommended the conduct of a national survey of establishments to inquire on labor turnover, vacancies and layoffs to adequately monitor the labor market performance of the business sector. This recommendation paved the way for the conduct of the Employment, Hours and Earnings Survey (EHES).

From 1989 to 1997, the EHES was conducted as a rider to the then Quarterly Survey of Establishments (QSE) of the National Statistics Office. The survey was designed to collect quarterly data on labor turnover, hours of work, layoffs and job vacancies. However, in 1997, the inquiry on layoffs was discontinued due to the improvement in its administrative reporting.

The EHES was completely modified in 1998 to generate more relevant and timely statistical information on emerging issues and problems affecting the labor market. The revision entailed the redesign of the questionnaire, modification of the sampling design, conformity of its industry groupings to the 1994 Philippine Standard Industrial Classification, and the assumption of the survey field operations by the Bureau in coordination with the DOLE Regional Offices.

Due to budget cuts, 2001 EHES was not conducted while the first semester 2002 EHES was limited to establihments in Metro Manila. No survey rounds have been conducted since then due to other survey priorities.
The inquiry on employment of specific groups of workers (minimum wage earners, output rate workers, non-regular workers, etc.) and agency-hired workers, among others, will be asked annually through the BLES Integrated Survey of Establishments (BITS).

• LABSTAT Updates (LABSTAT Digest for 1998-1999 EHES results)
• Philippine Industry Yearbook of Labor Statistics
• Yearbook of Labor Statistics
• Current Labor Statistics

Electronic

• BLES Homepage: http://www.bles.dole.gov.ph | http://www.manila-online.net/bles
• Diskette: Statistical tables of the EHES
• CD ROM: Philippine Industry Yearbook of Labor Statistics; Yearbook of Labor Statistics