October 29, 1998 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)
Total compensation costs double
from 1981 to 1997
Between June 1981 and December 1997, total
compensation costs increased 100 percent for civilian workers, including those in private
industry and State and local governments. Benefits costs increased by 126 percent,
compared with a 92-percent increase in wages and salaries.
[Chart data—TXT]
From 1982 to 1984, the increase in benefits costs averaged 7.3 percent
annually (December to December), a rate 2.0 percent more than the increase for wages and
salaries during the same period.
Benefit cost increases slowed between 1985-87. Wage and salary costs increased at the
same average annual rate (3.8 percent) as benefit costs during the period. The benefit
cost slowdown occurred because of a decline in the growth of health insurance costs, a
rapid fall in the growth of retirement plan costs, and smaller increases in the Social
Security tax rate.
Beginning in 1988, the rate of increase in health insurance costs accelerated once
more, and a Social Security tax increase took effect in January. The 1988 increase in
benefit costs rose to 7.0 percent. Benefit costs rose more rapidly than wages each year
through 1994.
From 1995 to 1997, benefit cost increases averaged 2.1 percent, and lagged behind wage
and salary cost increases each year. The moderation in benefit costs from 1995-97
reflected a renewed slowdown in the rate of increases of health insurance costs, and
continuing moderation in the cost of workers' compensation and State unemployment
insurance.
These data are a product of the BLS Employment Cost
Trends program. Additional information is available from the
bulletin, Employment Cost Indexes, 1975-97 (PDF 385K).
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 »