TECHNICAL NOTE

     Data in this release are from the National Compensation Survey (NCS), conducted by the U.S.
Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).  This release contains March 2011 data on
civilian, private industry, and state and local government workers in the United States.  Under the
NCS program, information on the incidence and provision of benefits is published in several stages.
This news release provides data on the incidence of (access to and participation in) selected
benefits and the share of premiums paid by employers and employees for medical care.  An extensive
number of tables on the incidence of selected benefits will be available in the annual bulletin to
be published in early fall, 2011.  Data on detailed provisions of health insurance in state and
local government for 2011 will be available in 2012.  Previous publications containing information
on employee benefits for private industry and State and local government workers are available on
the BLS website http://www.bls.gov/ncs/ebs.

Calculation details

     Averages for occupations within an establishment were used to produce estimates for worker
groups averaging hourly pay within the six earnings percentiles: Lowest 10 percent, lowest 25
percent, second 25 percent, third 25 percent, highest 25 percent, and highest 10 percent.  The
percentiles are computed using earnings reported for individual workers in sampled establishment
jobs and their scheduled hours of work.  Establishments in the survey may report only individual
worker earnings for each sampled job.  For the calculation of percentile estimates, the individual
worker hourly earnings are appropriately weighted and then arrayed from lowest to highest.

     The published 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, and 90th percentiles designate position in the earnings
distribution within each published occupation.  At the 50th percentile, the median, half of the
hours are paid the same as or more than the rate shown in the data tables, and half are paid the
same as or less than the rate shown.  At the 25th percentile, one-fourth of the hours are paid the
same as or less than the rate shown.  At the 75th percentile, one-fourth are paid the same as or more
than the rate shown.  The 10th and 90th percentiles follow the same logic.  The percentile values
are based on wages published in the bulletin National Compensation Survey: Occupational Earnings in
the United States, 2010 (Bulletin 2753).  Values corresponding to the percentiles used in the tables
are as follows:


    Characteristics                                    Hourly wage percentiles
                                          10         25       50 (median)       75        90
Civilian workers                        $8.50      $11.17       $16.73        $26.25    $39.33
Private industry workers                $8.25      $10.69       $15.87        $24.81    $37.89
State and local government             $11.77      $15.52       $22.27        $33.01    $45.31


     The tables on employer and employee medical premiums (tables 3 and 4) include participants in
all medical plans, with calculations for both single and family coverage.  The calculations are not
based on actual decisions regarding medical coverage made by employees within the occupations.
Rather, the premium calculations are based on the assumption that all employees in the occupation
have identical coverage.

Unmarried domestic partner benefits

     A domestic partnership is usually understood to mean two unrelated, unmarried adults who share
the same household.  In order to qualify for domestic partner benefits, an employee may need to
demonstrate that his or her ‘eligible partner’ meets certain criteria set by the employer. The
employer determines who is a domestic partner.  Employers are also not required to offer benefits,
regardless of whether or not their State recognizes domestic partners.

     Analysis of unmarried domestic partner data on defined benefit survivor benefits must take into
account the percent of workers who have access to defined benefit plans.  For example, employees in
private industry have less access to defined benefit plans (20 percent in 2010) than State and local
government employees (84 percent in 2010).  As a result, approximately 35 percent of private industry
employees with access to a defined benefit plan have a plan that provides domestic partner benefits,
while the figure in state and local government is 60 percent.  

Health care 

     Health care is a collective term for preventative and protective coverage for the following
measures: medical, dental, vision, and outpatient prescription drug plans.  If workers have access
to or participate in at least one of these benefits, they are considered as having access to or
participating in health care.

Medical care

     Medical care plans provide services or payments for services rendered in the hospital or by a
qualified medical care provider.

Take-up rates

     Take-up rates are the percentage of workers with access to a plan who participate in the plan.
They are computed by using the number of workers participating in a plan divided by the number of
workers with access to the plan, multiplied by 100, and rounded to the nearest one percent. Since
the computation of take-up rates is based on the number of workers collected rather than rounded
percentage estimates, the take-up rates in the tables may not equal the ratio of participation to
access estimates.

Leave benefits for teachers

     Primary, secondary, and special education teachers typically have a work schedule of 37 or 38
weeks per year. Because of this work schedule, they are generally not offered vacation or holidays.
In many cases, the time off during winter and spring breaks during the school year is not considered
vacation days for the purposes of this survey.

Survey scope

     The March 2011 NCS benefits survey represented about 120 million civilian workers; of this
number, about 101 million were private industry workers and 19 million, state and local government
workers (see Appendix table 2).

Survey response

     The March 2011 benefits survey included a sample of 17,585 establishments.  The definitions in
Appendix table 1 are as follows:

Responding.  The establishment provided information on at least one usable occupation.  An
occupation is classified as usable if the following data are present: earnings, occupational
characteristics (full- vs. part-time schedule, union vs. nonunion status, and time vs. incentive
pay type), and work schedule.

Refused or unable to provide data.  The establishment did not provide earnings, occupational
characteristics, and work schedule data for any occupation.

Out of business or not in survey scope.  The establishment is no longer in operation.
Establishments not in the survey scope include farm and private households, the self-employed, the
Federal government, and locations of an establishment that are not in the sampled area.  Also
excluded are establishments with no workers within the survey scope.  For example, an establishment
where all the workers are also owners would be excluded.

Obtaining information

     For research articles on employee benefits, see the Monthly Labor Review or Compensation and
Working Conditions Online at the BLS Web sites http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/home.htm and
http://www.bls.gov/opub/cwc/home.htm. For further technical information, see Chapter 8, "National
Compensation Measures," of the BLS Handbook of Methods at: http://www.bls.gov/opub/hom/pdf/homch8.pdf
and http://www.bls.gov/opub/hom/homch8_a.htm.