European Working Conditions Survey 2024: Coding report

Coding is essential to transform multilingual, heterogeneous raw responses into standardised, comparable statistical data. It supports weighting, estimation and modelling and standardises complex items like job titles, education and income, which enables robust socioeconomic and labour market analysis. 

The report details how respondents’ occupation, sector, education, income, region and urbanisation were coded to international standards. 

Open questions were used to record the respondent’s occupation and the sector of economic activity of the organisation for which they worked. Occupations were coded at the 4-digit level according to the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO) 08 while sectors were coded at the 3-digit level according to the Statistical Classification of Economic Activities in the European Community – NACE rev 2. 

Education can be a strong predictor of working conditions and labour market outcomes. Coding was automated using pre‑established national‑to‑ISCED mappings in order to obtain the internationally comparable categories in the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) 2011. 

Geographic coding ensures comparability across EU Member States. Geographic variables were assigned using sample-frame data. Most cases were geographically coded to the local administrative unit (LAU) level, the lowest level defined by Eurostat. From this, the NUTS3 region and degree of urbanisation DEGURBA were coded. 

Coding for income allows for low wage analysis, comparisons within and between countries and socioeconomic gradient studies. Work-related income was produced by combining open‑ended and banded responses, harmonised across currencies and reporting periods. Currencies were converted to euros so comparisons could be made between countries, and a version of earnings adjusted for purchasing power was created.