Commerce tasked to conduct Prevailing Wage Survey

The Central Statistics Division, under the CNMI Department of Commerce, will be visiting all businesses within the CNMI by mid to late this month to conduct a Prevailing Wage Survey (PWS), and is requesting the patience and cooperation of all businesses. More information will be forthcoming before the actual survey kick-off.

Currently, the CNMI Department of Labor is the proper authority to be conducting the PWS for the CNMI.

CSD, by statute, is the proper authority to be conducting or facilitating any official survey or census for the CNMI. Upon completion and compilation of the PWS data by CSD, Labor will receive all least sensitive data necessary for a prevailing wage process. Management and processing of all prevailing wage survey will be the function of the Labor department. Director Ivan Blanco of CSD, who is the lead project coordinator for the PWS data collection, assures that CSD will retain all confidential and sensitive data. He further acknowledged WIA director Edith Deleon Guerrero, Secretary of Labor Gil San Nicolas, and Commerce Secretary Sixto Igisomar for their ongoing efforts in getting the PWS off the ground .

The Prevailing Wage Survey is similar, if not the same, as the ongoing survey that the Saipan Chamber of Commerce is conducting. However, the PWS of CSD will capture business information on business inventories, expenses, job inventory, and so on, to support data availability for the CNMI’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) reports.

CSD and Labor understands the need for the Chamber to initiate their PWS as any entity may decide to conduct their own PWS in the absence of any existing PWS by the state or the CNMI. The overall goal of the administration is the development of a long-term process or system on all future and annual prevailing wage survey that the CNMI Department of Labor will conduct. As echoed by the Fitial administration’s press secretary Angel Demapan, “The administration is firm to put a process in place to provide stability and certainty to the business community with respect to availability of local jobs prevailing wage survey.”