March 22, 2012
Employer costs for legally required benefits in December 2011
Private industry employers spent an average of $28.57 per hour worked for
total employee compensation in December 2011. Wages and salaries averaged $20.14
per hour worked and accounted for 70.5 percent of these costs, while benefits
averaged $8.43 and accounted for the remaining 29.5 percent.
[Chart
data]
The average cost for legally required benefits was $2.33 per hour worked in
private industry (8.1 percent of total compensation) in December 2011. Social
Security comprises the largest legally required benefit cost component at $1.34
per hour or 4.7 percent of total compensation. Legally required benefits such as
Social Security and Medicare are often directly linked to wages; therefore,
higher paid occupations or industries will typically show higher cost estimates
for this compensation component.
Costs for other legally required benefits include workers' compensation,
which averaged 41 cents per hour worked (1.4 percent of total compensation);
Medicare, which averaged 33 cents (1.2 percent); state unemployment insurance,
which averaged 21 cents per hour worked (0.8 percent); and federal unemployment
insurance, which averaged just 2 cents per hour worked (0.1 percent).
Employer costs for legally required benefits varied by establishment size and
industry. Legally required benefits costs for private industry establishments
with fewer than 50 workers were $2.06 per hour worked in December 2011, compared
with $2.22 for establishments with 50 to 99 employees, $2.34 for establishments
with 100 to 499 employees, and $2.96 for establishments with 500 employees or
more.
These data are from the Employment Cost
Trends program. To learn more, see "Employer Costs for Employee Compensation
— December 2011" (HTML)
(PDF),
news release USDL-12-0450.
Related TED articles
Benefits | Compensation costs |
Earnings and wages
| Industry
studies | Size of
establishment
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