August 01, 2005 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Compensation costs up 3.2 percent in private industry over the year

Compensation costs for private industry workers increased 3.2 percent for the year ended June 2005, compared with a 4.0-percent gain for June 2004.

[Chart data—TXT]

While increases in wages and salaries continued at a moderate pace, the sharp increases in benefit costs began to moderate. For private industry workers, wages and salaries rose 2.4 percent in the year ended June 2005; this was similar to the gain of 2.6-percent in June 2004. Benefit costs gained 4.9-percent for the period ended June 2005, slowing dramatically from an increase of 7.3-percent for the year ended June 2004.

These data are from the BLS Compensation Cost Trends program. For more information, see "Employment Cost Index – June 2005" (PDF) (TXT), news release USDL 05-1434.