About A Third Of Employers' Costs Of Employees Is For Benefits

Posted by Milton Recht:

From The Wall Street Journal, Real Time Economics, "Number of the Week: Employers’ Benefits Costs" by Phil Izzo:

31%: The percent of employer costs that goes to paying for benefits.

Nearly a third of employers’ costs per worker goes to benefits on top of regular wages and salaries, and the share is even greater in some industries.

In December 2012, the most recent month for which detailed data are available, the average employer costs for each worker per hour was $30.84, according to the Labor Department. Of that total, $21.35 or 69% was for wages and salaries, the remainder went to benefits. The lion’s share of benefits’ costs is for health insurance, which on average makes up 8.5% of the total. That’s followed by legally-required benefits, at 7.8% of the total, which include Social Security, Medicare, workers’ comp and unemployment insurance. Paid leave takes up another 7% of the costs, with the remainder made up of retirement contributions and supplemental costs, such as overtime.

But that’s just the average; the contributions vary greatly across different industries. A greater share of state and local government’s costs per employee goes to benefits — 35% — compared with 31% for full-time private-sector workers. The costs to the government are greater per worker at $41.94 with $27.24 going toward salaries, while private employers on average pay $33.63 overall per worker and $23.22 on wages.