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Employer cost for employee compensation $29.63 per hour, December 2013

March 13, 2014

Nationwide, private industry employers spent an average of $29.63 per hour worked for total employee compensation in December 2013. Wages and salaries averaged $20.76 per hour worked (and accounted for 70.1 percent of total employee compensation costs), while total benefits costs averaged $8.87 (accounting for the remaining 29.9 percent).

 

 

Employer costs per hour worked for employee compensation, private industry, by region, December 2013
Compensation componentUnited StatesNortheastWestMidwestSouth

Total compensation

$29.63$33.87$31.44$28.44$26.93

  Total benefits

8.8710.619.398.617.73

    Paid leave

2.052.512.131.951.81

    Supplemental pay

0.851.060.870.740.78

    Insurance

2.452.962.452.552.08

    Retirement and savings

1.101.311.281.030.92

    Legally required benefits

2.432.782.662.332.14

  Wages and salaries

20.7623.2522.0519.8419.20

 

Note: The sum of individual items may not equal totals due to rounding.

 

 

Total benefits costs consist of paid leave benefits (which averaged $2.05 per hour worked), supplemental pay (which averaged 85 cents per hour worked), insurance benefits ($2.45), retirement and savings ($1.10), and legally required benefits ($2.43).

By region, total employee compensation costs per hour worked in December 2013 ranged from $26.93 in the South to $33.87 in the Northeast. Wages and salaries ranged from the South's $19.20 to the Northeast's $23.25. Total benefits costs were $7.73 and $10.61, respectively, in these two regions.

These data are from the Employment Cost Trends program. To learn more, see "Employer Costs for Employee Compensation — December 2013" (HTML) (PDF), news release USDL-14-0390.

SUGGESTED CITATION

Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, The Economics Daily, Employer cost for employee compensation $29.63 per hour, December 2013 at https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2014/ted_20140313.htm (visited December 12, 2024).

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