ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the different ways in which the incomes from employment of workers are measured in official statistics and looks at recent international trends in these data. The major sources of international data on incomes are Main Economic Indicators, published monthly by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Paris, the Bulletin of Labour Statistics, published quarterly by the International Labour Office, Geneva, and the Monthly Bulletin of Statistics, published monthly by the United Nations, New York. The OECD has, until recently, published special supplements entitled Main Economic Indicators: Historical Statistics which include monthly, annual, and quarterly data for twenty years for OECD countries. The corresponding publications from the other two organizations, which include data for several years for a wider range of countries and for more detailed topics, are The Year Book of Labour Statistics (ILO, Geneva) and The Statistical Yearbook (UN, New York), both of which are published annually. Each year the ILO publishes, in a separate issue of the Bulletin of Labour Statistics, the results of its ‘October Inquiry’ - a major world-wide survey of wages and hours of work relating to 159 occupations in 49 industry groups, for more than 200 countries (as well as retail prices of 93 food items). A substantial revision and expansion of the Inquiry was introduced in 1985.
