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Handbook of Methods Employee Benefits More Info

Employee Benefits: More Info

Additional information on employer-sponsored benefits is available on the Employee Benefits homepage.

Benefits data are available on the BLS website:

• Database and historical dataset
• Latest news release

For some common questions and answers, see Employee Benefits: Questions and Answers. For more information on definitions of additional benefit concepts, see National Compensation Survey: Glossary of Employee Benefit Terms.

Articles

Selected articles on Employee Benefits methodology are referenced below.

Estimation:

• “Employee access to sick leave before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic,” 2021
• “How do retirement plans for private industry and state and local government workers compare?” , 2023

Imputation:

• “An evaluation of alternative imputation methods” , 1995
• “Alternative imputation models for wage related data collected from establishment surveys” , 2000
• “Recent modification of imputation methods for National Compensation Survey benefits data” , 2009

Reliability:

• “BLS resumes estimation of sample errors for benefits measures” , 2008
• “Application of Fay’s Method for variance estimation in the National Compensation Survey Benefits Products” , 2008

Other National Compensation Survey (NCS) products

The National Compensation Survey (NCS) is an establishment-based survey that provides data on pay and benefits. Its outputs include the Employment Cost Index (ECI), the Employer Costs for Employee Compensation (ECEC), and Employee Benefits publications.

Data from the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) and NCS programs are combined and provided to the President’s Pay Agent to meet the requirements of the Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act of 1990 (FEPCA). FEPCA established locality pay and the President’s Pay Agent designated locality pay areas based on Office of Management and Budget (OMB) statistical area definitions. The President’s Pay Agent advises the President on the issues of federal pay. It is made up of the Secretary of Labor and the directors of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). For more information, see the Annual Report of the President’s Pay Agent.  A combination of OEWS and NCS data is used by the President’s Pay Agent (in a report to the Federal Salary Council) to recommend adjustments in pay levels of some federal workers.

Contact us

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Telephone: (202) 691-6199 (Monday through Friday, 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM EST)

Information for NCS respondents is available on the National Compensation Survey (NCS) Respondents webpage. Visit the regional office contact page for regional office contact information.

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