2009 Employee Benefits in the United States — 2009-07-28

While about 70 percent of workers in private industry had access to employer provided medical care benefits in March 2009, only 25 percent of the lowest wage earners -- those with average hourly wages in the lowest 10 percent of all private industry wages -- had such access, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. By contrast, nearly all workers with hourly wages in the highest 10 percent of all private industry wages had access to medical care benefits. (See table 2.) A worker with access to medical care benefits is defined as having an employer-provided medical plan available for use, regardless of the worker�s decision to enroll or participate in the plan. These data are from the National Compensation Survey (NCS), which provides comprehensive measures of occupation earnings, compensation cost trends, and incidence and provisions of employee benefit plans.