BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation news release, March 11, 2015: “Private industry employers spent an average of $31.32 per hour worked for total employee compensation in December 2014, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Wages and salaries
averaged $21.72 per hour worked and accounted for 69.4 percent of these costs, while benefits averaged $9.60 and accounted for the remaining 30.6 percent. Total compensation costs for state and local government workers averaged $43.95 per hour worked in December 2014. Total employer  compensation costs for civilian workers, which include private industry and state and local government  workers, averaged $33.13 per hour worked in December 2014. Employer Costs for Employee Compensation (ECEC), a product of the National Compensation Survey,  measures employer costs for wages, salaries, and employee benefits for nonfarm private and state and  local government workers. Private industry employer costs for paid leave benefits averaged $2.16 per hour worked in December  2014.  Private industry costs for paid leave include vacation leave which averaged $1.13 per hour  worked, holiday leave which averaged 66 cents, sick leave which averaged 26 cents, and personal leave which averaged 12 cents in December 2014.  Paid leave benefit costs are often directly linked to wages;  therefore, higher paid occupations or industries will typically show higher estimates for this  compensation component. Private industry paid leave benefit costs were highest for management, professional, and related  occupations at $4.67 per hour worked, or 8.4 percent of total compensation, in December 2014. Costs were lowest among service occupations at 56 cents, or 3.9 percent of total compensation. (See table 5.)  Included in this amount were employer costs for vacations, holidays, sick leave, and personal leave.”