Department of Labor Logo United States Department of Labor
Dot gov

The .gov means it's official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you're on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Compensation costs in private industry averaged $34.77 per hour worked in September 2019

January 02, 2020

Employer costs for employee compensation for private industry workers averaged $34.77 per hour worked in September 2019. Wages and salaries averaged $24.38 per hour worked and accounted for 70.1 percent of these costs. Benefit costs averaged $10.38 and accounted for the remaining 29.9 percent. In the utilities industry, total compensation costs averaged $63.68 per hour worked in September; benefits accounted for 39.6 percent of compensation costs in the industry.

Private industry employer costs per hour worked for employee compensation by industry, September 2019
Industry Total compensation Wages and salaries Benefits

All workers

$34.77 $24.38 $10.38

Utilities

63.68 38.47 25.21

Information

58.32 39.22 19.10

Financial activities

47.97 32.20 15.77

Educational services

47.66 34.32 13.34

Professional and business services

41.48 29.87 11.62

Construction

40.45 28.05 12.40

Manufacturing

40.01 26.19 13.81

Transportation and warehousing

39.14 25.24 13.89

Wholesale trade

37.80 26.71 11.08

Health care and social assistance

36.18 25.31 10.87

Other services

29.52 21.58 7.94

Retail trade

20.54 15.54 5.00

Leisure and hospitality

15.80 12.40 3.40

Total employer compensation costs in leisure and hospitality averaged $15.80 per hour worked in September. Benefits accounted for 21.5 percent of this total.

These data are from the Employment Cost Trends program. To learn more, see "Employer Costs for Employee Compensation — September 2019." We also have more charts on employer costs for employee compensation.

SUGGESTED CITATION

Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, The Economics Daily, Compensation costs in private industry averaged $34.77 per hour worked in September 2019 at https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2020/compensation-costs-in-private-industry-averaged-34-point-77-per-hour-worked-in-september-2019.htm (visited March 28, 2024).

OF INTEREST
spotlight
Recent editions of Spotlight on Statistics


triangle