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Thursday, September 10, 2009
EMPLOYER COSTS FOR EMPLOYEE COMPENSATION—JUNE 2009
Employers spent an average of $1.29 for employee retirement and savings plans for every hour worked
in June 2009, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. This accounted for 4.4
percent of total compensation. Retirement and savings, which includes both defined benefit and defined
contribution plans, is one benefit category included in the Employer Costs for Employee Compensation series,
along with wages and salaries. Total compensation (wages and salaries and benefits) for civilian workers
averaged $29.31 per hour worked in June 2009. Wages and salaries, which averaged $20.42, accounted for 69.7
percent of these costs, while benefits, which averaged $8.89, accounted for the remaining 30.3 percent. (See
table 1.) Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, a product of the National Compensation Survey,
measures employer costs for wages, salaries, and employee benefits for nonfarm private and state and local
government workers.
In addition to retirement and savings, the other benefit categories were: life, health, and disability
insurance benefits, which averaged $2.50 (8.5 percent of total compensation); legally required benefits,
including Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, and workers’ compensation, which averaged
$2.28 per hour (7.8 percent); paid leave benefits (vacations, holidays, sick leave, and personal leave), which
averaged $2.07 (7.1 percent); and supplemental pay which averaged 76 cents (2.6 percent).
Private industry
In June 2009, private industry employer compensation costs averaged $27.42 per hour worked. Wages
and salaries averaged $19.39 per hour (70.7 percent), while benefits averaged $8.02 (29.3 percent). Employer
costs for paid l