June 11, 2009
(The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)
Health benefit costs in private industry, March 2009
The average cost for health insurance benefits was $2.00 per hour worked in private industry (7.3 percent of total compensation) in March 2009. In March 1999, employer costs for health benefits averaged $1.03, or 5.4 percent of total compensation.
[Chart data—TXT]
Among occupational groups, employer costs for health insurance benefits ranged from 91 cents per hour and 6.7 percent of total compensation for service workers, to $2.91 and 6.0 percent of total compensation for management, professional, and related occupations.
Among other occupational categories, employer costs for health benefits averaged $1.77 (8.3 percent) for sales and office occupations, lower than $2.44 (7.9 percent) for natural resources, construction, and maintenance occupations, and $2.25 (9.7 percent) for production, transportation, and material moving occupations.
Employer costs for health insurance benefits were significantly higher for union workers, averaging $4.15 per hour (11.4 percent), than for nonunion workers, averaging $1.75 (6.6 percent).
These data are from the Employment Cost Trends program. To learn more, see "Employer Costs for Employee Compensation—March 2009" (PDF) (HTML), news release USDL 09-0634.
Of interest
Spotlight on Statistics: National Hispanic Heritage Month
In this Spotlight, we take a look at the Hispanic labor force—including labor force participation, employment and unemployment, educational attainment, geographic location, country of birth, earnings, consumer expenditures, time use, workplace injuries, and employment projections.
.
Read more »