Wage statistics are mainly based on data from the Icelandic Survey on Wages, Earnings and Labour Cost. The target population contains all business units (company, institution or municipality) with more than 10 employees. In the survey, data is collected directly from business unit through the software used for calculating wages. Every month, a business unit in the survey sends information containing detailed information on the structure of earnings and labour cost items for all their employees, as well as background data on the employees and the business unit..