2007 Employee Benefits in State and Local Governments — 2008-03-25

Eighty-nine percent of workers in State and local government had access to employer-sponsored retirement benefits in September 2007. Almost 3 times as many workers had access to defined benefit plans (83 percent) than to defined contribution plans (29 percent). Nearly all workers (96 percent) who had access to a defined benefit retirement plan chose to participate in it, whereas only 63 percent of workers with access to defined contribution plans chose to enroll in them. Eighty-seven percent of workers had access to medical care plans, a percentage greater than access to dental care (55 percent) and to vision care (38 percent). These findings are from the Summary, "National Compensation Survey: Employee Benefits in State and local government, September 2007," published today. These results can be found on the BLS Web site http://www.bls.gov/ncs/ebs/sp/ebsm0007.pdf. These data are from the National Compensation Survey (NCS), which provides comprehensive measures of occupational earnings, compensation cost trends, and details of benefit provisions.