Adjusted for inflation, wages and benefits fell by 1.3% after rising by 2.8% in 2008, the first year of the recession. The inflation-adjusted cost of wages and benefits at the end of 2009 stood just 1.1% higher than at the end of the previous recession in 2001, the Labor Department said.<\/p>\n
The Employment Cost Index<\/strong> measures of the cost of labor free from the influence of changes in compensation caused when high-wage sectors grow more \u0096 or less — rapidly than low-wage sectors. Unlike widely cited data on wages, the index includes the cost of benefits, which account for about 30% of total compensation costs.<\/p>\n Before adjusting for inflation, the index rose 0.5% in the fourth quarter, slightly higher than the 0.4% increase in third quarter. \u0093The weak labor market will help keep inflationary pressures benign, said economist Anika Khan<\/strong> of Wells Fargo Securities<\/strong>. \u0093As such, the Federal Reserve continues to have the flexibility to keep short-term interest rates at the current level.\u0094<\/p>\n State and local government workers\u0092 compensation in 2009 grew by 2.4%, twice the pace of the 1.2% increases in the private sector. State and local government employees compensation has outpaced private-sector increases for the past several years.<\/p>\n Private employers\u0092 health insurance costs rose 4.4% in 2009, after increasing by 3.5% the year before. The 2009 increase, though, was the second lowest rate of increase in more than a decade, according to the survey. The Labor Department noted that that this reflects, in part, employers\u0092 reducing their contributions to employees\u0092 health insurance or switching to lower-cost health plans. It added that the data in this part of its quarterly survey isn\u0092t as reliable as the rest of the report.<\/p>\n Wage and benefit costs, both before and after adjusting for inflation, grew more slowly 2009 than any year since the U.S. government began tracking data in 1982 as double-digit unemployment weakened workers\u0092 ability to command higher pay. Over the past 12 months, the cost of wages and benefits for workers other than those employed by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":850,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-247507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/850"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247507\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/img><\/a>
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