38 percent of private industry workers had access to nonproduction bonuses in 2017

The end of the year means bonus time for some workers. That means deciding whether to save it, pay for holiday gifts, or start on a New Year’s resolution and buy that gym membership. Overall, 38 percent of private industry workers and 34 percent of state and local government workers in 2017 had access to bonuses not related to production.

End-of-year bonuses were one of the most frequent types of nonproduction bonuses in private industry, with 11 percent of workers having access. Six percent of private industry workers had holiday bonuses available to them. State and local government workers were less likely to have access to end-of-year and holiday bonuses, with each available to only 1 percent of these workers.

Payment instead of benefits was among the most common nonproduction bonuses offered to state and local government workers and was available to 16 percent of them. In contrast, this bonus was available to 4 percent of workers in private industry.

The share of workers offered bonuses not related to production varied across private industries. Workers in information (74 percent) and finance and insurance (72 percent) were among those with the highest access to these bonuses.

At the other end of the scale were workers in educational services (17 percent) and accommodation and food services (18 percent).

These data are from the National Compensation Survey — Benefits program. For more information, see our most recent annual bulletin on benefits.