Economic News Release

                                               TECHNICAL NOTE

     Employer Costs for Employee Compensation (ECEC) measures the average cost to employers for wages
and salaries and benefits per employee hour worked.

     ECEC includes the civilian economy, which includes data from both private industry and state and
local government.  Excluded from private industry are the self-employed and farm and private household
workers.  Federal government workers are excluded from the public sector.  The private industry series
and the state and local government series provide data for the two sectors separately.

     The cost levels for this quarter were collected from a probability sample of approximately 61,600
occupations selected from a sample of about 12,600 establishments in private industry and
approximately 9,300 occupations from a sample of about 1,400 establishments in State and local
government.  Data are collected for the pay period including the 12th day of the survey months of
March, June, September, and December.

Comparing private and public sector data

     Compensation cost levels in state and local government should not be directly compared with levels
in private industry.  Differences between these sectors stem from factors such as variation in work
activities and occupational structures.  Manufacturing and sales, for example, make up a large part
of private industry work activities but are rare in state and local government.  Professional and
administrative support occupations (including teachers) account for two-thirds of the state and local
government workforce, compared with one-half of private industry.

ECEC quarterly publication focus

     ECEC news releases are published quarterly, providing civilian, private industry, and state and
local government cost per hour estimates as well as additional detail on a specific compensation cost
topic of interest.  This quarter focuses on compensation costs in state and local government. Topics
of news releases for the upcoming reference periods are as follows:

          * December 2011—Legally required and paid leave benefit costs in private industry
          * March 2012—Health benefit costs in private industry
          * June 2012—Retirement and savings benefit costs in private industry

ECEC detailed information and measures

     For detailed information on the Employer Costs for Employee Compensation series, see National
Compensation Measures, Chapter 8, of the BLS Handbook of Methods at:
www.bls.gov/opub/hom/pdf/homch8.pdf.