February 01, 2008 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Compensation costs in private industry up 3.0 percent in 2007

In private industry, compensation costs rose 3.0 percent in the year ended December 2007. In December 2006 the increase was 3.2 percent.

12-month percent changes in Employment Cost Index, private industry, December 2002-December 2007
[Chart data—TXT]

Wages and salaries for private industry workers increased 3.3 percent for the 12-month period ended December 2007. Benefit costs increased 2.4 percent.

These data are from the BLS Compensation Cost Trends program. Compensation costs (also known as employment costs) include wages, salaries, and employer costs for employee benefits. For more information, see "Employment Cost Index -- December 2007" (PDF) (HTML), news release USDL 08-0129.

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The very first issue of The Editor's Desk (TED) was posted on September 28, 1998. TED was the first online-only publication of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For 10 years, BLS has been committed to posting a new TED article each business day, for a total of over 2,400 articles so far.

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