Employer costs for employee compensation, September 2012

In September 2012, wages and salaries of all civilian workers accounted for 69.2 percent of employer costs for employee compensation and averaged $21.32 per hour worked.  Benefits accounted for the remaining 30.8 percent of employer compensation costs and averaged $9.48 per hour worked.

For private industry workers, wages and salaries accounted for 70.3 percent of employer compensation costs in September 2012 and averaged $20.36 per hour worked.  Benefits accounted for the remaining 29.7 percent of employer compensations costs and averaged $8.58 per hour worked. The largest components of benefit costs were insurance and legally required benefits, each representing 8.2 percent of total benefit costs.  Retirement and savings accounted for 3.6 percent of total employer compensation.

For state and local government employers in September 2012, wages and salaries accounted for 64.7 percent of compensation costs and averaged $26.91 per hour worked.  Benefits accounted for the remaining 35.3 percent of employer compensation costs and averaged $14.65 per hour worked. The largest component among benefits was insurance, which accounted for 12.1 percent of total employer compensation and averaged $5.02 per hour worked. Retirement and savings accounted for 8.9 percent of total employer compensation.

These data are from the Employment Cost Trends program. To learn more, see "Employer Costs for Employee Compensation — September 2012" (HTML) (PDF), news release USDL-12-2404.