September 26, 2008 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

New Employment Cost Indexes for selected metropolitan areas

Among 14 selected metropolitan areas, the percent change in the cost of compensation ranged from 1.5 percent in Detroit to 4.4 percent in Philadelphia for the year ended in June 2008.

[Chart data—TXT]

For the U.S. as a whole, compensation costs rose 3.0 percent from June 2007 to June 2008.

All of these estimates are 12-month percent changes in Employment Cost Indexes. BLS has just introduced estimates for 14 selected metropolitan areas. The 14 areas are Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Jose-San Francisco, and Washington-Baltimore.

These data are from the BLS National Compensation Survey - Employment Cost Trends program. For more information, see "BLS Introduces New Employment Cost Indexes for 14 Metropolitan Areas," by Albert E. Schwenk, Compensation and Working Conditions Online, September 2008. (See the article for the full names of the metropolitan areas.)