The needs of unmarried employees differ from their colleagues with a spouse and children, and have led to cafeteria style benefits packages. This survey looks at the kind of benefits employees can expect to receive in different industries and among companies varying size. Before designing the survey, we reviewed literature on the subject to determine methodological and technical considerations. This site gave a survey history, description, the scope and method of the survey and a list of other publications related to the topic. According to that publication it is not clear if more generous benefits help attract or retain employees, but the absence of benefits may repulse employees.
Benefits are an important part of an employee's compensation.
The kind of benefits desired vary from employee to employee depending on family status and life style. After preparing our own survey form, we shared it with other states to get their input and to make the effort more efficient and productive. The results needed to be comparable to the wage survey so that benefits could be added to wages. This would give us the total compensation and allow us to stratify the results by Industry, Region and Employment Size Class. Dividing the benefits survey by those specific occupations was not a consideration since we wanted to keep the survey simple and not to overburden employers.