U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS COMPENSATION AND WORKING CONDITIONS

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Beyond Basic Benefits: Employee Access to Other Types of Benefits, 1979-2008

by John E. Buckley

Bureau of Labor Statistics

Originally Posted: May 29, 2009

Since the late 1970s, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has collected data on employee access to various employer-provided

benefits beyond the basics of health insurance, retirement savings, and vacation, sick and holiday leave. Periodically, BLS

has modified the list of benefits by adding those that were increasing in popularity and dropping those that showed no growth,

remained rare, or had limited user interest.

For many decades, the BLS National Compensation Survey (NCS) and its predecessor surveys have collected and published

data on employee benefits. The early surveys concentrated on the presence among workers of major employee “fringe”

benefits within sampled establishments. (The percent of workers that have enrolled in a particular benefit or have it available

for their use is known as the “incidence rate.”) Generally, the data obtained from surveyed firms were tied to commonly

known benefits for which information was readily available and concepts easily understood. For example, one question might

be, “Does your establishment offer health insurance to a majority of your office or plant workers?” Responses were limited to 

Yes, No, or Data not available. If the answer was yes, the funding of the benefit was determined--that is, whether the

employer paid all of the costs or costs were shared by the employee. If a majority in a group was offered a benefit, all

workers were considered covered; if fewer than a majority was offered a benefit, no worker was considered covered.

In the early part of the 20th century, nonwage benefits were sparse, and the term “fringe benefit” was appropriate. In a 2001

article by BLS economists Robert Van Giezen and Albert E. Schwenk, the authors noted that the cost of benefits in the

mid-1920s “was still a very small part of a workers compensation package, accounting for less than three percent of the

employers cost for employee compensation.”1 In recent years, however, that figure has grown considerably. Data from the

BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation (ECEC) program show that benefits accounted for about 30 percent of

total compensation in December 2008.2

The advent of the BLS Employee Benefits Survey (EBS) greatly expanded the types of benefit details collected and

published. The EBS was developed in the 1970s, during a period when the Federal Office of Personnel Management initiated

its Total Compensation Comparability (TCC) program, which was designed to compare Federal and private pay and benefits.

In 1979 and 1980, BLS conducted experimental surveys of benefits in medium and large firms.3 The EBS was designed to

provide a timely and comprehensive measure covering all elements of employees nonwage compensation. If the EBS was

to be comprehensive, newly appearing benefits had to be monitored and collected when they showed growth potential. In the

1981 EBS bulletin, a number of these benefits were published as “other benefits,” which covered benefits as disparate as

paid funeral leave, subsidized meals, and employee parking.4 Table 1 shows these “other benefits” data for three

occupational groups in private industry in 1981: professional and administrative, technical and clerical, and production

employees.5
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Table 1. Other benefits: Percent of full-time employees in medium and large establishments providing specified

benefits by percent of eligible employees, private industry, 1981

Benefit All workers eligible Some workers eligible

Professional and administrative employees

Paid leave:

Funeral leave 87 1

Military leave 79 1

Profit sharing, savings, and stock plans:

Profit sharing 20 5

Savings and thrift 32 8

Stock bonus plans 11 2

Stock purchase plans 16 3

Other stock plans(1) 21 3

Income continuation plans:

Severance pay 53 4

Miscellaneous benefits:

Employee discounts 46 1

Gifts 11 3

In-house infirmary 48 4

Relocation allowance 75 9

Full defrayment of expenses 59 5

Partial defrayment of expenses 16 4

Recreational facilities 21 1

Full defrayment of cost 10 1

Partial defrayment of cost 10 (2)

Subsidized meals 25 4

Full defrayment of cost 1 1

Partial defrayment of cost 24 3

Educational assistance 78 4

Full defrayment of expenses 30 2

Partial defrayment of expenses 48 2

Parking 67 10

Provided at no cost 64 8

Provided below commercial rates 2 2

Automobile 2 25

Without reimbursing the company 1 19

Partially reimbursing the company 1 6

Technical and clerical employees

Paid leave:

Funeral leave 88 1

Military leave 76 1

Footnotes:

(1) Other stock plans include Employee Stock Ownership Plans and Tax Reduction Act Stock Ownership Plans.

(2) Less than 0.5 percent.
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Benefit All workers eligible Some workers eligible

Profit sharing, savings, and stock plans:

Profit sharing 21 5

Savings and thrift 26 8

Stock bonus plans 7 2

Stock purchase plans 15 3

Other stock plans(1) 15 4

Income continuation plans:

Severance pay 51 5

Miscellaneous benefits:

Employee discounts 55 2

Gifts 12 3

In-house infirmary 38 7

Relocation allowance 40 5

Full defrayment of expenses 30 4

Partial defrayment of expenses 10 1

Recreational facilities 16 1

Full defrayment of cost 8 (2)

Partial defrayment of cost 8 1

Subsidized meals 23 5

Full defrayment of cost 2 1

Partial defrayment of cost 21 4

Educational assistance 69 3

Full defrayment of expenses 27 1

Partial defrayment of expenses 42 3

Parking 61 14

Provided at no cost 58 11

Provided below commercial rates 3 3

Automobile 1 2

Without reimbursing the company (2) 1

Partially reimbursing the company 1 1

Production employees

Paid leave:

Funeral leave 83 3

Military leave 64 2

Profit sharing, savings, and stock plans:

Profit sharing 13 4

Savings and thrift 14 5

Stock bonus plans 5 1

Stock purchase plans 9 1

Other stock plans(1) 16 3

Footnotes:

(1) Other stock plans include Employee Stock Ownership Plans and Tax Reduction Act Stock Ownership Plans.

(2) Less than 0.5 percent.
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Benefit All workers eligible Some workers eligible

Income continuation plans:

Severance pay 28 5

Miscellaneous benefits:

Employee discounts 46 1

Gifts 9 2

In-house infirmary 47 3

Relocation allowance 26 5

Full defrayment of expenses 13 4

Partial defrayment of expenses 12 1

Recreational facilities 15 (2)

Full defrayment of cost 7 (2)

Partial defrayment of cost 8 (2)

Subsidized meals 11 3

Full defrayment of cost 1 1

Partial defrayment of cost 10 1

Educational assistance 56 5

Full defrayment of expenses 18 3

Partial defrayment of expenses 39 2

Parking 76 6

Provided at no cost 76 5

Provided below commercial rates 1 1

Automobile 1 1

Without reimbursing the company 1 1

Partially reimbursing the company (2) (2)

Footnotes:

(1) Other stock plans include Employee Stock Ownership Plans and Tax Reduction Act Stock Ownership Plans.

(2) Less than 0.5 percent.

The data in table 1 show similarities and differences among the three occupational groups. For example, the percent of

workers who were eligible for funeral leave ranged from 83 percent for production workers to 88 percent for technical and

clerical. In contrast, 75 percent of professional and administrative employees were eligible for relocation allowances, but only

40 percent of technical and clerical employees and 26 percent of production employees were eligible for relocation

allowances.

The “paid leave” category grew over the years, starting only with paid funeral leave and military leave, but expanding to

include paid sick leave, holidays, vacation leave, leave for jury duty, and personal leave, and paid and unpaid family leave.

The items in the “profit sharing, savings, and stock plans” category moved from the “other benefits” category to form an

entirely new category called “defined contribution plans,” which is now part of the retirement benefits category. Several

benefits that were published in 1981 are no longer collected in the NCS, either because they lacked growth potential or

because the costs, in terms of respondent burden and BLS resources, did not justify the collection effort. Table 2 shows the

benefits that were studied at some point between 1979 and 2008 and subsequently dropped from the NCS.
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Table 2. List of miscellaneous benefits dropped, 1979-2008

Benefit Years of publication

Adoption assistance 1988-2008

Child care: funds(1) 1995-2008

Child care: on-site or off-site(1) 1995-2008

Child care: resource or referral(1) 2003-2008

Company automobile for personal business 1981-1984

Education assistance: work and nonwork unspecified 1981-1985

Education assistance: work and nonwork specified 1988-2008

Employee discounts 1981-1991

Employer-provided home computers 2003-2008

Eldercare 1989-1995

Financial counseling 1985-1989

Fitness centers 1995-2008

Gifts 1981-1991

In-house infirmary 1981-1993

Paid lunch time 1979-1993

Paid rest time 1980-1993

Parking 1981-1991

Prepaid legal services 1985-1993

Recreational facilities 1981-1993

Relocation allowance 1981-1988

Sabbatical leave 1991

Severance pay 1981-2000

Subsidized meals 1981-1991

Supplemental unemployment benefits 1985-2000

Travel accident insurance 1985-2008

Footnotes:

(1) An estimate of the total (the percent of workers with one or more of the three separate child care items) first appeared in EBS publications

in 1994.

Note: Pilot studies were conducted by the Employee Benefits Survey in 1979 and 1980; annual publications of the Employee Benefits Survey

began with the publication of the 1981 survey year data.

Some of the dropped items had elements that were retained in the later NCS lists of benefits. The three child-care items, for

example, were combined and are shown as one benefit on the new list. In addition, wellness programs now include some of

the activities related to fitness centers. (See the accompanying article by the same author in this issue of CWC Online.)

Two traditional benefits that were included in the EBS--paid lunch time and paid rest time--were dropped from the EBS after

being collected from 1979 through 1993. During that period, in medium and large private establishments, the percent of fulltime workers with a paid lunch time ranged from 13 percent in 1979 to 8 percent in 1991. A paid rest time was much more

widespread than a paid lunch time, but the percent with the benefit dropped from its high of 76 percent in 1982 to 67 percent

in 1991. The two benefits were eliminated from the survey because they showed little growth over time, there was limited

public interest in them, and the collection costs could no longer be justified.6

Recently, there has been a renewed interest in rest time, in the form of napping. Some advocates of a napping break

maintain that there is a productivity gain rather than a loss when napping is allowed, because the employee returns from his
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or her break feeling more energized. In an article by stress management consultant Elizabeth Scott, the author notes that

because there are “pros and cons to each length of sleep” any amount can be helpful. “If you only have 5 minutes to spare,”

she writes, “just close your eyes; even a brief rest has the benefit of reducing stress and helping you relax a little, which can

give you more energy to complete the tasks of your day.”7

For 2009--that is, published data collected after March 2008--the NCS once again changed the list of benefits to better reflect

current practices in the benefits environment, to conserve both BLS and respondent resources, and to drop items that were

rarely encountered, showed no growth, and had limited user interest.

Over the years, there were several different lists of “other benefits,” with the list for 2009 collecting data on 23 benefits, down

from the 28 benefits collected for the 2008 survey year. Table 3 shows some of the benefits previously collected, some new

benefits, and some benefits that existed but have been changed, such as combining a three-part child-care benefit into one

question, the addition of retiree health plans for those under 65 years of age and those 65 years and older, and financial

planning benefits.

Table 3. Percent of private industry workers with access to quality-of-life benefits, pretax benefits, and miscellaneous

benefits, and survey status of benefit item, National Compensation Survey, March 2008

Benefit(1) Percent of workers with access(2) Kept or dropped for 2009 survey year?

Quality of life benefits

Education assistance of any type (3) Dropped

Work related 50 Dropped

Nonwork related 15 Dropped

Adoption assistance 11 Dropped

Child-care assistance(4) 15 Kept

Employer-provided funds 3 Kept

On-site and off-site childcare 5 Kept

Child-care resource and referral services 11 Kept

Dependent care reimbursement account 31 Kept

Flexible workplace 5 Kept

Employer-provided home computers 2 Dropped

Employee assistance programs 42 Kept

Subsidized commuting 6 Kept

Long-term care insurance 13 Kept

Fitness centers 13 Dropped

Pretax benefits

Cash or deferred arrangements with no

employer contribution(5) 17 Kept

Footnotes:

(1) For definitions, see the Technical Note in National Compensation Survey: Employee Benefits in Private Industry in the United States,

March 2007, Summary 07-05 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, August 2007), pp. 37-39; available on the Internet at http://www.bls.gov/ncs/ebs/sp/

ebsm0006.pdf.

(2) All workers in private industry = 100 percent

(3) An estimate for the entire category is not available.

(4) The total is less than the sum of individual child-care provisions because many employees have access to more than one of the benefits.

(5) Cash or Deferred Arrangements with no Employer Contribution is the new title for out-of-scope salary reduction plans. There was no

change in the definition.

(6) Items listed under "Miscellaneous benefits" may have appeared under other categories in other years.

(7) Stock options moved to the "nonproduction bonuses" category.
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Benefit(1) Percent of workers with access(2) Kept or dropped for 2009 survey year?

Health savings account 8 Kept

Section 125 cafeteria benefits (3) Kept

Flexible benefits 17 Kept

Health care reimbursement account 33 Kept

Dependent care reimbursement accounts 31 Kept

Miscellaneous benefits (6)

Stock options(7) 8 Kept

Wellness programs 25 Kept

Job-related travel accident insurance 23 Dropped

Footnotes:

(1) For definitions, see the Technical Note in National Compensation Survey: Employee Benefits in Private Industry in the United States,

March 2007, Summary 07-05 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, August 2007), pp. 37-39; available on the Internet at http://www.bls.gov/ncs/ebs/sp/

ebsm0006.pdf.

(2) All workers in private industry = 100 percent

(3) An estimate for the entire category is not available.

(4) The total is less than the sum of individual child-care provisions because many employees have access to more than one of the benefits.

(5) Cash or Deferred Arrangements with no Employer Contribution is the new title for out-of-scope salary reduction plans. There was no

change in the definition.

(6) Items listed under "Miscellaneous benefits" may have appeared under other categories in other years.

(7) Stock options moved to the "nonproduction bonuses" category.

Table 3 also shows the percent of workers with access to “other benefits” in 2008. (Employees are considered as having

access to a benefit plan if it is available for their use.) The benefits with the highest rate of worker access were work-related

education assistance (50 percent) and employee assistance programs (42 percent). Among the benefits with lower access

rates, 2 percent of workers in private industry had access to employer-provided personal computers for home use, and 3

percent of workers had access to employer provided child-care funds.

Some of the “other benefits” items published in 1981 are no longer in the NCS program, while others are now regularly

studied. This is a direct result of the NCS keeping pace with changes in the labor market and responsive to data users

requests. Since 1981, paid funeral and military leave became part of the regularly studied benefits. In 1981, approximately 88

percent of private industry employees were eligible for paid funeral leave; the estimate for 2008 was 69 percent. The estimate

for paid military leave also declined, from about 80 percent in 1981 to 48 percent in 2008. Education assistance is another

benefit that had published estimates in 1981 and 2008. About 78 percent of employees were eligible to get the benefit in the

earlier period and approximately 65 percent had access in 2008.8

John E. Buckley

Economist, Division of Compensation Data Analysis and Planning, Office of Compensation and Working Conditions, Bureau of

Labor Statistics.

Telephone: (202) 691-6299; E-mail: Buckley.John@bls.gov. Notes

1 Robert Van Giezen and Albert E. Schwenk, “Compensation from before World War I through the Great Depression,” Compensation and

Working Conditions, fall 2001, p.19.

2 The Employer Costs for Empoyee Compensation (ECEC) data provide estimates of employer costs per hour worked for employee

compensation, with the benefits broken down by cost and percent for the component parts. For example, in table 1 of the publication providing

December 2008 ECEC data, employer costs per hour worked for employees insurance totaled $2.45 (or 8.4 percent of total costs), with

health insurance accounting for most of the insurance bill, $2.31 (or 7.9 percent of total costs). See Employer Costs for Employee

Compensation--December 2008, USDL 09-0247 (U.S. Department of Labor), March 12, 2009; available on the Internet at http://www.bls.gov/

news.release/archives/ecec_03122009.htm.
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3 Medium and large establishments are those with 100 or more workers, except for the early years of the Employee Benefits Survey, when

employment size varied by industry. For more information on establishment size, see the technical note in Employee Benefits in Medium and

Large Firms, 1981, Bulletin 2140 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, August 1982), pp. 41–44; available on the Internet at http://www.bls.gov/ncs/ebs/

sp/ebbl0038.pdf.

4 See Employee Benefits in Medium and Large Firms, 1981, Bulletin 2140.

5 The data in table 1 are from Employee Benefits in Medium and Large Firms, 1981, Bulletin 2140.

6 For more information, see Hilery Simpson, “Paid Lunch and Paid Rest Time Benefits: Highlights from the Employee Benefits Survey,

1979-93,” Compensation and Working Conditions, December 1996, pp. 18-23.

7 See Elizabeth Scott, “Sleep Benefits: Power Napping for Increased Productivity, Stress Relief & Health,” About.com: Stress Management,

updated July 7, 2008; available on the Internet at http://stress.about.com/od/lowstresslifestyle/a/powernap.htm.

8 Additional 2008 estimates of “other benefits” are available on the BLS website at http://www.bls.gov/ncs/ebs/benefits/2008/

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