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Employment Cost Index
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Additional Publications
In addition to official indexes, the BLS provides journal publications, working papers, and articles that research the methodology, measurement, and trends found in the Employment Cost Index.
The Economics Daily
Each business day, The Economics Daily publishes fresh economic information in charts and highlights intriguing BLS data that you might otherwise have missed. The Economics Daily covers a different BLS program and survey each business day, including the Employment Cost Index; see the archive of previously published articles for The Economics Daily.
Spotlight on Statistics
Each edition of Spotlight on Statistics features graphics, maps, and brief written analysis to illustrate BLS data that examine the U.S. labor market and economy.
Monthly Labor Review
Established in 1915, the Monthly Labor Review (MLR) is the principal journal of fact, analysis, and research from the BLS. Economists, statisticians, and subject-matter experts author MLR articles about the economy, the labor force, employment and unemployment, inflation, spending, productivity, occupational injuries and illnesses, wages, prices, and more.
- Employment changes in jobs and their effect on the Employment Cost Index (2026)
- Relative importance: putting the Employment Cost Index (ECI) into perspective (2026)
- Seasonality in the Employment Cost Index (2024)
- Removing workers’ compensation costs from the National Compensation Survey (2023)
- Federal government wage indexes (2023)
- The Linked Employment Cost Index: a first look and estimation methodology (2022)
- Introducing 2012 fixed employment weights for the Employment Cost Index (2016)
- The National Compensation Survey and the Affordable Care Act: preserving quality health care data (2015)
- Differences in union and nonunion compensation, 2001–2011 (2013)
- Changes affecting the Employment Cost Index: an overview (2006)
- Introducing 2002 weights for the Employment Cost Index (2006)
- Compensation in the 1970s (2001)
- The Employment Cost Index: what is it? (2001)
- Compensation Cost Trends in Private Industry and State and Local Governments (1999)
- Explaining the Differential Growth Rates of the ECI and ECEC (1997)
- Increases in employer costs for employee benefits dampen dramatically (1988)
- Introducing new weights for the Employment Cost Index (1985)
- How benefits will be incorporated into the Employment Cost Index (1978)
- Employment Cost Index: a measure of change in the 'price of labor' (1975)
Office of Survey Methods Research
The Office of Survey Methods Research (OSMR) plans and directs activities for evaluating and improving BLS programs, and conducts primary research on statistical and behavioral science issues relevant to the BLS mission. Research papers on the National Compensation Survey (NCS) and the Employment Cost Index (ECI) are available, including: