Economic News Release

                                                          TECHNICAL NOTE

     Employer Costs for Employee Compensation (ECEC) measures the average cost to employers for wages and salaries and benefits
per employee hour worked.

     ECEC includes the civilian economy, which includes data from both private industry and state and local government.  Excluded
from private industry are the self-employed and farm and private household workers.  Federal government workers are excluded
from the public sector.  The private industry series and the state and local government series provide data for the two
sectors separately.

     The cost levels for this quarter were collected from a probability sample of approximately 62,700 occupations selected
from a sample of about 13,200 establishments in private industry and approximately 11,700 occupations from a sample of about
1,900 establishments in state and local governments.  The private industry sample is rotated over approximately 5 years, which
makes the sample more representative of the economy and reduces respondent burden.  The state and local government sample,
which is replaced less frequently than the private industry sample, was replaced in its entirety in September 2007.  The
sample is replaced on a cross-area, cross-industry basis.  Data are collected for the pay period including the 12th day of
the survey months of March, June, September, and December.

Comparing private and public sector data

     Compensation cost levels in state and local government should not be directly compared with levels in private industry.
Differences between these sectors stem from factors such as variation in work activities and occupational structures.
Manufacturing and sales, for example, make up a large part of private industry work activities but are rare in state and
local government.  Professional and administrative support occupations (including teachers) account for two-thirds of the
state and local government workforce, compared with one-half of private industry.

ECEC quarterly publication focus

     ECEC news releases are published quarterly, providing civilian, private industry, and state and local government cost
per hour estimates as well as additional detail on a specific compensation cost topic of interest.  This quarter focuses on
compensation costs in state and local government. Topics of news releases for the upcoming reference periods are as follows:

          * December 2009--Legally required and paid leave benefit costs in private industry
          * March 2010--Health benefit costs in private industry
          * June 2010--Retirement and savings benefit costs in private industry

ECEC detailed information and measures

     For detailed information on the Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, see Chapter 8. National Compensation Measures
of the BLS Handbook of Methods at: www.bls.gov/opub/hom/pdf/homch8.pdf.