Employee Benefits in the United States Technical Note

                                              TECHNICAL NOTE

Estimates in this release are from the National Compensation Survey (NCS), conducted by the U.S. 
Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The NCS provides comprehensive measures of 
compensation cost levels and trends and also provides benefits incidence estimates on the percentage of 
workers with access to and participating in employer-provided benefit plans. 

Employee Benefits data: The Employee Benefits in the United States, March 2024 includes additional 
details on the coverage, costs, and provisions of employer-sponsored benefits, and will be published 
shortly after this news release. See www.bls.gov/ebs/publications/annual-benefits-summary.htm for the 
latest benefits publications. Historical estimates are also accessible in Excel format at 
www.bls.gov/ebs/publications/xlsx/employee-benefits-in-the-united-states-dataset.xlsx and through the 
database query tool at www.bls.gov/ebs/data.htm.  

Standard errors: Measures of reliability are available for published estimates, which provide users a 
measure of the precision of an estimate to ensure that it is within an acceptable range for their intended 
purpose. For further information see www.bls.gov/ebs/technical-notes/standard-errors.htm. 

Comparing private and public sector data: Incidence of employee benefits in state and local 
government should not be directly compared to 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.

Civilian workers: Statistics for private industry and state and local government are published separately 
and then combined to measure the civilian economy. Excluded from the civilian economy are workers 
employed in federal government and quasi-federal agencies, military personnel, agricultural workers, 
volunteers, unpaid workers, individuals receiving long-term disability compensation, and those working 
overseas. In addition, private industry excludes workers in private households, the self-employed, 
workers who set their own pay (e.g., proprietors, owners, major stockholders, and partners in 
unincorporated firms), and family members paid token wages.

Leave benefits for teachers: Primary, secondary, and special education teachers typically have a 
contracted work schedule of 37 or 38 weeks per year. Because of this work schedule, they are generally 
not offered vacations or holidays. In many cases, the time off during winter and spring breaks during the 
school year are not considered vacation days for the purposes of this survey.

Medical care premiums: The estimates for medical care premiums are not based on actual decisions 
regarding medical coverage made by employees; instead, it is assumed that all employees in the 
occupation can opt for single or family coverage. Monthly premiums are collected when possible. 
Annual premiums are converted to monthly premiums by dividing by 12 months.

Sample rotation: One-third of the private industry sample is rotated each year except in years when the 
government sample is replaced. For the March 2022 and 2023 publications, however, an additional 
(fourth) private industry sample was used in estimation to mitigate the impact of decreasing response 
rates. The government sample is replaced less frequently than the private industry sample. The state and 
local government sample was replaced in its entirety for the March 2017 reference period.

Classification system: The National Compensation Survey publishes estimates of compensation costs
and trends as well as benefit coverage by ownership, industry group, occupational group, and
geographic areas, see www.bls.gov/eci/factsheets/national-compensation-survey-classification-systems-
mapping-files.htm.


Sample size:

Survey scope:

Average hourly wage percentiles: Estimates by worker average wage are grouped into six wage
categories- the lowest 10 percent, the lowest 25 percent, the second 25 percent, the third 25 percent, the
highest 25 percent, and the highest 10 percent. The categories use percentile values based on
unpublished March 2024 wages and salaries from the BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation
publication at www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/ecec_06182024.pdf.

The percentiles are computed using hourly wages and salaries along with scheduled hours of work
reported for individual workers in sampled establishments. Establishments in the survey are asked to
report only individual worker wages and salaries for each sampled job. For the calculation of the
percentile values, the individual worker hourly wages and salaries are weighted and arrayed from lowest
to highest. The values corresponding to the percentiles are:

The lowest 10- and 25-percent wage categories include those occupations with an average hourly rate 
less than the 10th percentile value and 25th percentile value, respectively. The second 25-percent
category includes those occupations with rates at or above the 25th percentile value but less than the
50th percentile value. The third 25-percent category includes those occupations with rates at or above
the 50th percentile value but less than the 75th percentile value. Finally, the highest 25- and 10-percent
wage categories include those occupations with an average hourly wage greater than or equal to the 75th
percentile value and 90th percentile value, respectively.

Individual workers can fall into a wage category different from the average for the occupation into
which they are classified because average hourly wages for the occupation are used to produce the
benefit estimates.

Obtaining information: For articles on employee benefits, see the Monthly Labor Review benefits
section at www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/subject/b.htm and Beyond the Numbers: Pay and Benefits at
www.bls.gov/opub/btn/archive/home.htm. The Economics Daily articles archive is available at
www.bls.gov/opub/ted/employee-benefits-survey.htm. For technical information, see "National
Compensation Measures," in the BLS Handbook of Methods at www.bls.gov/opub/hom/ncs/home.htm.

Benefit publications from 1980 to the present are also available at www.bls.gov/ebs/publications/annual-
benefits-summary.htm. The latest glossary of benefit terms is available at
www.bls.gov/ebs/publications/national-compensation-survey-glossary-of-employee-benefit-terms.htm.
In addition, the public databases may also be used to obtain data from 1985 to 2006 and 2010 to the
present, see www.bls.gov/ebs/data.htm.

If you are deaf, hard of hearing, or have a speech disability, please dial 7-1-1 to access
telecommunications relay services.