The Ministry of Labour, Social Security and the Third Sector will launch the Survey of Employment, Earnings and Hours (SEEH) on Monday, June 1. The survey is being conducted on behalf of the Minimum Wage Board, with support from the Barbados Statistical Service and the Prime Minister’s Office.
Drawing on international best practice, SEEH is designed to produce high-quality, employer-sourced wage data, which will allow the Minimum Wage Board, policymakers, social partners, and the public to understand earnings patterns across sectors, occupations, firm sizes, and worker characteristics, including gender-based pay differences.
This initiative will restore Barbados’ capacity to produce detailed, job-level data on how workers are paid, the hours they work, and the structure of earnings across key industries.
It is also intended to become a permanent feature of Barbados’ statistical framework and will be conducted annually. The SEEH represents a critical component of Government’s commitment to developing fair, transparent, and evidence-based wage policies.
Selected businesses will be contacted by representatives of the Ministry of Labour and authorised personnel from the Sagicor Cave Hill School of Business and Management (SCHSBM) and provided with guidance on how to participate in the survey. Participation is mandated under the Statistics Act, Cap. 192 and is, therefore, a legal requirement for selected establishments.
Employers will be asked to provide information relating to the number of employees on their payroll, hours worked, and various components of compensation, including basic wages, overtime payments, allowances, and bonuses.
No individual employee names or national identification numbers will be collected. All information submitted will be treated with the strictest confidence and will not be shared with tax authorities, the National Insurance Scheme, or any regulatory body.
The deadline for survey responses is Monday, June 22, and the preliminary results will be shared with the Minimum Wage Board on Friday, August 28.
Businesses will receive a link to complete the survey and be contacted by authorised personnel from the Ministry of Labour and/or the SCHSBM. They will be required to complete the survey within 14 working days. Those preferring in-person support will be visited by authorised enumerators, who will administer the survey at the establishment.
Employers are encouraged to designate an Officer to answer the questions and to have payroll records for the reporting pay periods June 1st, 2024 – May 31st, 2025, and June 1st, 2025 – May 31st, 2026.
A comprehensive establishment-based earnings survey has not been conducted in Barbados since May 2018. As a result, the country has relied on broader household surveys to understand wages and employment, as well as those that provide useful indicators but cannot capture the detailed picture that modern wage governance requires. The SEEH aims to address that gap.
