Employer Costs for Employee Compensation Technical Note

                                          
                                          TECHNICAL NOTE
                                          
Employer Costs for Employee Compensation (ECEC), a product of the National Compensation Survey (NCS), 
provides the average employer cost for wages and salaries as well as benefits per hour worked. The 
ECEC covers the civilian economy, which includes data from both private industry and state and local 
government. Federal government workers are excluded. Additionally, the self-employed, private household 
workers, and the agricultural sector are excluded from the private industry. 

Total benefit costs consist of five major categories and include 18 benefits:

* Paid leave - vacation, holiday, sick, and personal leave 
* Supplemental pay - overtime and premium, shift differentials, and nonproduction bonuses 
* Insurance - life, health, short-term disability, and long-term disability 
* Retirement and savings - defined benefit and defined contribution 
* Legally required benefits - Social Security [refers to Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability 
  Insurance (OASDI) program], Medicare, federal and state unemployment insurance, and 
  workers’ compensation

All workers are included in the benefit cost estimates, including those that do not have plan access 
or do not participate. Costs are also affected by other factors such as cost sharing between employers 
and employees, plan features, and plan generosity. For the latest information on the percentage of 
workers with access to and participating in employer-sponsored benefit plans, including health care and 
retirement and savings plans, see www.bls.gov/ebs.

The Handbook of Methods provides additional details on the sample design, calculation methodology, and 
resources explaining changes over time; see www.bls.gov/opub/hom/ecec/home.htm. 

Sample size: Data for this reference period were collected from a probability sample of approximately 
28,300 occupational observations selected from a sample of about 6,600 private industry establishments 
and approximately 7,300 occupational observations selected from a sample of about 1,400 state and local 
government establishments that provided data at the initial interview. 

Measures of reliability: Relative standard errors (RSEs) provide users a tool to ascertain the quality 
of an estimate to ensure that it is within an acceptable range for their intended purpose. RSEs are 
available at www.bls.gov/web/ecec/ecec-rse.htm and the database query tool at www.bls.gov/ecec/data.htm.

Comparisons: Compensation cost levels in state and local government should not be directly compared 
with levels in the private industry. Differences between these sectors stem from factors such as 
variation in work activities and occupational structures.

Classification systems: 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. 

Additional information: Additional and historical ECEC estimates are available in the ECEC database 
query tool at www.bls.gov/ecec/data.htm and in XLSX format at www.bls.gov/ecec/tables.htm. The ECEC 
release schedule is available at www.bls.gov/schedule/news_release/ecec.htm. Subscribe to receive the 
BLS Economic News Release email at public.govdelivery.com/accounts/USDOLBLS/subscriber/new. 

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