June 22, 2006 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)
Health benefit costs in private industry, March 2006
The average cost for health benefits was $1.72 per hour worked in private industry (6.9 percent of total compensation) in March 2006.
[Chart data—TXT]
Among occupational groups, employer costs for health benefits ranged from 77 cents per hour and 6.2 percent of total compensation for service workers to $2.50 and 5.6 percent of total compensation for management, professional, and related occupations.
Among other occupational categories, employer costs for health benefits averaged $1.49 (7.5 percent) for sales and office occupations, $2.15 (7.7 percent) for natural resources, construction, and maintenance occupations, and $1.91 (9.0 percent) for production, transportation, and material moving occupations.
These data are from the Compensation Cost Trends program. To learn more about employer costs for employee compensation and benefits, see
Employer Costs for Employee Compensation—March
2006 (PDF) (TXT),
news release USDL 06-1049.
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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