EMPLOYER COSTS FOR EMPLOYEE COMPENSATION – JUNE 2015
Private industry employers spent an average of $31.39 per hour worked for employee compensation in
June 2015, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Wages and salaries averaged $21.82 per
hour worked and accounted for 69.5 percent of these costs, while benefits averaged $9.56 and accounted
for the remaining 30.5 percent. Total compensation costs for state and local government workers
averaged $44.22 per hour worked in June 2015. Total compensation costs for civilian workers, which
include private industry and state and local government workers, averaged $33.19 per hour worked in
June 2015.
Employees of Federal Contractors to Get Paid Sick Leave
" 'Contractors should take note that this requirement
does not take effect immediately and is not self-implementing. It takes effect
in 2017 and only after the Department of Labor issues rules,' [said Shlomo Katz,
a government contracts lawyer at Brown Rudnick].... 'The executive order
requires covered contractors to provide sick leave in addition to vacation and
other fringe benefits already required by the Service Contract Act and Davis
Bacon Act,' Katz added. 'Some will argue that the President is exceeding his
authority by mandating sick leave because Congress has already legislated via
those two laws (SCA and Davis-Bacon) that government contractors provide
'prevailing' fringe benefits to workers, and there is no indication that the
President has done any studies to determine that sick leave is a "prevailing"
fringe benefit.' " (Bloomberg BNA)
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) just reported that President Obama has already effectively raised the minimum wage.
How so? The Obamacare employer mandate requires employers that do not provide “qualifying” health benefits to pay a steep penalty. Few minimum-wage employers provide Obamacare-compliant health coverage. So the penalty adds to their cost of hiring—and thus reduces employment. As the CBO puts it:
[S]ome employers will respond to the penalty by hiring fewer people at or just above the minimum wage—an effect that would be similar to the impact of raising the minimum wage for those companies’ employees.
Congressional Budget Office
Increasing the minimum wage would have two principal effects on low-wage workers. Most of them would receive higher pay that would increase their family’s income, and some of those families would see their income rise above the federal poverty threshold. But some jobs for low-wage workers would probably be eliminated, the income of most workers who became jobless would fall substantially, and the share of low-wage workers who were employed would probably fall slightly.
