Objectives of the 75-country plan of WageIndicator

The objectives of the plan are eightfold:

1. To solve the need for longitudinal worldwide monitoring information on individual earnings by means of worldwide surveys. This need is increasingly felt because of the globalization of the economy and the programs to combat extreme poverty.
2. To collect individual data on labour earnings, non-financial benefits, working hours, industry, occupation, employment status, and personal characteristics on a permanent basis. To use as much as possible the Internet for this data collection by means of a volunteer, multi-country and multi-lingual web survey, keeping up standards for good quality data collection. If necessary, the data collection will be supplemented with paper-based or face-to-face-interviews.
3. To meet the increasing desire, present among individuals worldwide due to the globalizing economy, for good quality wage information by posting this information at the Internet. These individuals have to decide about job mobility, occupational choices, or individual wage negotiations, mostly having only poor quality information available, if any.
4. To present occupation-specific wage information by means of Salary Checks at national WageIndicator websites. All websites invite their visitors to complete a volunteer web survey. The message is: we gave you a free wage benchmark, please share some data and time in return. To attract web visitors to the web survey by using well-developed web marketing with media cooperation.
5. To expand the current multi-country WageIndicator web survey on work and wages, run by the non-profit WageIndicator Foundation, to 75 countries. Once fully operational, the surveys aim to gather annually the responses of 2 million individuals in the labour force in 75 countries.
6. To aim firstly for collecting data sufficiently reliable for averaging wages by occupation, and secondly for representative estimates of the national labour force. The datasets of all countries will meet the first aim, but not all will meet the second aim. The data of these national web surveys will be weighted by propensity score adjustment, using reference survey data, national Labour Force Survey micro-data or other micro-data. If no micro-data are available, aggregate tables will be used if available.
7. To deliver a quarterly released dataset, based on the web survey. The dataset is available for annual monitoring reports on worldwide wages and for other research on a variety of topics related to the impact of the globalizing economy.
8. To develop projects as part of this plan. To submit these projects at several funding agencies. The plan aims at the development of self-supporting, sustainable web surveys and sustaining operations.