The employer cost in New England leads the rest of the country at nearly $40 per hour worked.
The data from the Employer Costs for Employee Compensation (ECEC) report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)Â for September found employee costs in the Northeast dwarfed the other three regions of the country, with the South being the region with the lowest employee costs at $29.46 per hour.
The United States as a whole averaged $32.27 employer cost per hour worked. Of this, 69.8 percent represented wages and salaries (at $22.52 per hour) and benefits accounted for the remaining 30.2 percent (at $9.75 per hour).
In New England, employer costs stood at $38.92 per hour worked. Wages and salaries made up 70.2 percent of hourly total compensation costs (at $27.33 per hour), and total benefits accounted for 29.8 percent (at $11.59 per hour), according to the BLS.
The breakdown of benefit costs in New England was:
- $3.03 per hour worked for health InsuranceÂ
- $2.88 per hour for legally required benefits (which includes Social Security and Medicare)
- $2.86 per hour for paid leave (which includes vacation, holiday, sick, and personal leave categories)
- $1.53 per hour for retirement and cost savings
The cost levels for this quarter were collected from a probability sample of approximately 28,400 occupations selected from a sample of about 6,800 establishments in private industry.
