Adjustments are applied to previous years' wage data before combining with current data. The survey excludes proprietors, owners and partners of unincorporated firms, unpaid family workers, workers on unpaid leave and contractors and temporary agency employees not on the company payroll. Wages for the survey are straight time, gross pay, exclusive of premium pay. Excluded are back pay, jury duty pay, overtime pay, severance pay, shift differentials, non-production bonuses and tuition reimbursements. Hourly earnings data are collected in 12 wage intervals.
Employers report the number of employees in an occupation by wage intervals.
With the exception of the upper open-ended wage interval, a mean wage value is calculated for each wage interval based on occupational wage data collected by the Office of Compensation and Working Conditions. The mean wage value for the upper open-ended wage interval is its lower bound. These interval mean wage values are then attributed to all workers reported in the interval. For each occupation, total weighted wages in each interval are summed across all intervals and divided by the total occupational employment. These estimates incorporate data from the OES survey and are generated using the same statistical methods which are utilized by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.