Overview of BLS Statistics on Wages, Earnings, and Benefits

BLS publishes a large amount of information on the wages, earnings, and benefits of workers. Generally, this information is categorized in one or more of the following ways:

• Geographic area (national, regional, State, metropolitan area, or county data)
• Occupation (such as teacher or carpenter)
• Industry (such as manufacturing or retail trade)

Additional categories such as age, sex, or union membership may be used in some cases.

BLS statistics on wages, earnings, and benefits:

Wages by Area and Occupation

Wage data are available by occupation for the Nation, regions, States, and many metropolitan areas. Wage data by area and occupation are from the National Compensation Survey, Occupational Employment Statistics Survey, or the Current Population Survey. See Wages by Area and Occupation to determine which information suits your needs.

Earnings by Industry

The Current Employment Statistics survey is a monthly survey of the payroll records of business establishments that provides data on earnings of production and nonsupervisory workers at the National level. Earnings data from this survey are only available for production workers in manufacturing at State and local levels.

Incidence and Provision of Employee Benefits

The National Compensation Survey–Benefits provides information on the share of workers who participate in specified benefits, such as health care, retirement plans, and paid vacations. These data also show the details of those benefits, such as deductible amounts, retirement ages, and amounts of paid leave. The benefits data are being combined with Employment Cost Trends data to provide a more comprehensive view of total compensation.

Employment Cost Trends

This program publishes quarterly statistics that measure change in labor costs (also called employment costs or compensation costs) over time; quarterly data measuring the level of costs per hour worked are also published. Indexes are available for total labor costs, and separately for wages/salaries and for benefit costs. Some information is available by region, major industry group, major occupational group, and bargaining status.

State and County Wages

Annual and quarterly wage data by detailed industry for the Nation, States, and many metropolitan areas and counties.

Collective Bargaining Agreements

This program gathers agreements for bargaining units of 1,000 or more workers. Also, data on major work stoppages are available—major work stoppages involve 1,000 or more workers and last a full shift or longer.

In addition to what is shown on the BLS home page under "Wages, Earnings, & Benefits," the following information on earnings also is available:

Weekly earnings of Wage and Salary Workers

Annual and quarterly usual weekly earnings of wage and salary workers, by age, race, Hispanic origin, sex, educational attainment, occupation, industry, and/or union affiliation.

For more information on the measurement of wages, earnings and benefits, see the BLS Handbook of Methods.

What BLS Does Not Have:

BLS does not publish detailed information on household income, which includes not only wages and salaries, but also interest, dividends, pensions, etc. Information on household income is available from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Last Modified Date: December 9, 2002

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