February 09, 2001 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)
Stock compensation an old story
Equity compensation plans—plans that invest in or provide workers with company
stock—are not new, although the variety of such plans has grown in recent years.
[Chart data—TXT]
Some common potential uses of company stock are in defined contribution retirement plans. Nearly half (47 percent) of full-time employees in private industry participated in a defined contribution program in 1997. The most widespread form of defined contribution plan was a savings and thrift program.
Nearly nine out of ten employees of medium and large employers who participated in savings and thrift plans in 1997 had the ability to choose investment options for their contributions. For 42 percent, the employer's stock was one of those options. It was increasingly likely that workers could also direct the investment an employer's matching contributions, but only 25 percent of workers had the option of directing matching funds into their employer's stock.
These data are from the BLS National
Compensation Survey. Defined contribution plans are accounts set up
for each participant, to which the employer and often the employee make
fixed contributions; the retirement payment is not fixed, but determined
by these contributions. Read more in "Putting
Stock in Benefits: How Prevalent Is It?" (PDF
71K), by William Wiatrowski, Compensation
and Working Conditions, Fall 2000.
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 »