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Employment Cost Index
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Relative Importance: measuring contributions to the Employment Cost Index (ECI)
Beginning with the publication of the June 2026 Employment Cost Index (ECI), relative importance estimates will be available in the ECI database.
What do relative importance estimates measure?
A relative importance estimate represents the wage bill of a published ECI series as a percentage of the higher-level aggregate series above. A wage bill measures the average wage or benefit cost that employers incur multiplied by the number of employees represented. For more information on wage bills, see the Calculation section of the Handbook of Methods.
A relative importance measure can change through two variables: employment and wage/benefit costs. While wage and benefit costs change quarter to quarter, the ECI is a fixed-weight index that holds occupation and industry composition fixed. As such, ECI relative importance values often remain largely stable over time with shifts in employment only coming during a reweight. For more information on the history of reweighting in the ECI, see Reweighting and Recoding in the ECI.
An increase in relative importance suggests the wage bill for the lower-level series has increased faster than the aggregate series. A decrease in relative importance suggests the wage bill for the lower-level series has increased less than the aggregate.
How to use relative importance estimates
Relative importance estimates can be used to derive the contribution of a specific series to the higher-level aggregate estimate.
Examples using ECI data will be available shortly after the June 2026 ECI release
Which ECI series are published with relative importance estimates?
Relative importance estimates are available for select ECI series. Occupation and industry relative importance estimates aggregate up to their respective all workers series by ownership: civilian, private industry, and state and local government. Due to publication criteria, not all industries or occupations are published for each ownership, which may result in summations less than 100.
Relative importance estimates are not available for series by bargaining status (union/nonunion), geographic area (Census region/Census division/metropolitan area), or incentive-based pay. Fixed employment data are not available for these series and, therefore, the employment weights are reallocated within these series for each reference period based on the current ECI sample. For more information on the calculation methods used in the ECI, see the Handbook of Methods. Relative importance estimates are also not available for seasonally adjusted estimates.
Accessing relative importance estimates
Relative importance estimates can be found in the ECI database attached to current dollar index series. Updated relative importance estimates will be available in the database with each ECI release. Future ECI release dates are available on the BLS release calendar.
More information
ECI relative importance estimates were first introduced in Relative importance: putting the Employment Cost Index (ECI) into perspective.
For more information on the concepts and calculation methods of the ECI, see the Handbook of Methods.
Last modified: 7/30/2026