Employer costs for employee compensation for civilian workers averaged $24.59
per hour worked in December 2003, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S.
Department of Labor reported. Wages and salaries, which averaged $17.56, accounted
for 71.4 percent of these costs, while benefits, which averaged $7.03, accounted
for the remaining 28.6 percent.
In an issue set to hit newsstands March 1, the magazine Business 2.0 lists
the 20 hottest job markets in America. All of them are expected to generate
850,000 skilled jobs in the next four years.
Despite piling up more debt and filing for bankruptcy at an increasing rate, American households are generally in financial good shape, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Monday.
More than 60 percent of the nation's employees describe themselves as satisfied
with their compensation and benefits packages, but just 45 percent view their
organizations' pay policies are fair, according to the results of a survey sponsored
by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and CNNfn.
Hourly compensation rose 1.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2003, down from
the 3.4-percent rise of the third quarter, the Labor Department reported. When the changes in consumer prices
were taken into account, real hourly compensation grew 0.5 percent during the
fourth quarter of 2003 and 1.0 percent one quarter earlier.
In almost every state, industries whose share of jobs is growing pay less than the industries whose share of jobs is shrinking, according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute.
More than 40 percent of employers
are scaling back their 2004 pay-increase budgets for at least some portion of
their employee population, according to a new survey from Mercer Human Resource
Consulting.
Seventy-one percent of executives say that corporations have a responsibility
to promote health and wellness among their employees, but many of those companies
offer no health-education programs, according
to recent American Management Association (AMA) survey.
Total compensation costs for civilian workers rose 1.0 percent from June to September 2003, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported yesterday.
Many more American workers with employer-provided health insurance are unhappy
with changes to their health insurance than are unhappy with changes to their
salary or retirement benefits, according to a new Harris Interactive poll conducted
for the Wall Street Journal.
