June 29, 1999 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)
Benefits nearly a third of
compensation in manufacturing
Health insurance, paid leave, Social Security, and other
benefits together accounted for close to a third of the compensation received by
manufacturing employees in March 1999. Legally required benefits such as Social Security
were the largest of all the benefits.
![Relative importance of employer costs for employee compensation, manufacturing, March 1999](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20120925013731im_/http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/images/1999/Jun/wk5/art02.gif)
[Chart data—TXT]
Overall, 31.2 percent of manufacturing compensation in March 1999 was in the form of
benefits. Social Security and other legally required benefits represented 8.5 percent of
total compensation. Paid leave accounted for 7.6 percent of compensation in manufacturing
and health insurance for 6.9 percent.
In contrast, workers in industries outside of manufacturing received only about a
quarter of their compensation in benefits. In March 1999, benefits comprised 25.9 percent
of nonmanufacturing compensation. The percent of compensation from legally required
benefits was slightly higher in nonmanufacturing than in manufacturing, at 8.7 percent.
For each of the other benefits in the chart, the percent was lower for nonmanufacturing
workers.
These data are a product of the BLS Employment Cost Trends
program. Additional information is available from "Employer
Costs for Employee Compensation, March 1999," news release USDL 99-173. Figures
in chart do not sum to 100.0 percent due to rounding.
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.
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Read more »