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Leased Employees

What are leased employees?

A leased employee is a full or part-time employee of a business or organization that has contracted with an employee leasing service (also known as a professional employer organization) to obtain human resource management services. The employee leasing company provides a wide range of human resource and personnel management services, such as payroll accounting, payroll tax return preparation and filing, benefits administration, recruiting, and labor relations management, to the client business. The employee leasing company and client organization operate as co-employers with regard to the human relations responsibilities to the employees covered by their contract. The employee leasing company pays wages and employment taxes of the leased employees out of its own accounts.

Why are we asking about leased employees?

The Economic Census provides an important source of information about labor productivity -- how many workers it takes to produce the output of an industry.

Leased employees constitute a significant and growing share of employment in many industries. We want to account for them in the industry where they work to ensure a complete measure of industry employment.

Which industries will we ask to report about leased employees?

We will include the question about leased employees on nearly every 2002 Economic Census form.

What will we ask about leased employees?

The leased employment item asks for the number, annual payroll, and first quarter payroll of full- and part-time leased.