The WageIndicator is an international web-portal with national websites with content about wages, notably a crowd-pulling Salary Check providing free information on occupation-specific wages, controlled for individual factors. In all countries, an apparent need for wage information can be noticed. The web-visitors are encouraged to complete the continuous, international comparable web-survey on work and wages with a prize incentive. See for more information www.wageindicator.org. The number of national websites is constantly increasing. Started in 2000 with a paper-survey on women's wages in the Netherlands, it moved to a web-survey in 2001, expanded to other countries since 2004, and employs currently websites with web-surveys in 48 countries, in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas. Between 2000 and 2008, more than 750,000 respondents have completed the survey, of which more than 200,000 in 2008 only.
The web-survey is unique. No other survey collects data on wages for so many countries and so up-to-date. The dataset has variables related to wages, benefits, wage periods, annual bonuses, contractual and actual working hours, working conditions, bargaining coverage, trade union membership, workplace representation, education, region, country of birth, ethnic group, family composition and other socio-demographic variables, as well as attitudinal and satisfaction data with regard to working life. For data-cleaning purposes, the web-survey has additional survey questions for respondents reporting extreme or odd wages. The data are derived from a volunteer survey, and therefore not representative for the labour force in a country, though the higher Internet access rates, the more likely the Internet population reflects the national population. Current research on the bias in the data for the Netherlands and Germany shows an underrepresentation of workers in small part-time jobs and lower job satisfaction. |
