WAGES & SALARIES: The Hidden Payroll

WAGES & SALARIES

For every dollar paid out in wages last year, U.S. manufacturers paid another 16.4¢ in fringe benefits and nonmanufacturing companies paid 22.2¢, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said last week. This “hidden payroll” for paid vacations, free meals, terminal pay, pensions and profit-sharing plans, said the chamber’s Economic Research Director Dr. Emerson P. Schmidt, costs employers some $25 billion a year. In a survey of 736 companies, Schmidt found that fringe-benefit expenditures averaged $644 per employee last year. Although such benefits are not included in the Bureau of Labor Statistics wage figures, Schmidt said they should be, because “. . . wage rates [alone] no longer measure the cost of hiring labor …”