Employer costs for employee compensation in March 2011

Wages and salaries averaged $19.85 per hour worked and accounted for 70.7 percent of total compensation costs, while benefits averaged $8.25 and 29.3 percent, respectively.

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Of the $8.25 in private industry employer benefit costs, paid leave averaged $1.92 (6.8 percent of total compensation), supplemental pay averaged 76 cents (2.7 percent), insurance benefits averaged $2.26 (8.0 percent), retirement and savings averaged $1.00 (3.5 percent), and legally required benefits averaged $2.31 (8.2 percent) per hour worked.

Total compensation costs for the 15 Combined and Metropolitan Statistical Areas (CSAs and MSAs) in the United States ranged from $41.42 in the San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, California CSA, to $23.29 in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, Florida MSA.

In the San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland CSA, wages and salaries averaged $28.82, while benefits averaged $12.60 per hour worked; in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach MSA, wages and salaries averaged $17.04, while benefits averaged $6.25 per hour worked.

These data are from the BLS Employment Cost Trends program and are for private industry workers. To learn more, see "Employer Costs for Employee Compensation – March 2011" (HTML) (PDF), news release USDL-11-0849.