© Copyright 2003 by the Wyoming Department of Employment, Research & Planning
Employee Benefits in Wyoming: 2001
Section I: Purpose
This publication complements the Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) Wage
Survey Research & Planning (R&P) conducts annually. Together, these
efforts assist employers and employees in determining whether they are providing
or receiving competitive compensation (wages and benefits). Employee benefits
include paid leave, insurance, retirement plans, and miscellaneous benefits. The
Benefits Survey questionnaires were mailed quarterly in 2001. We thank all
employers who responded to the survey and helped make it a success.
Section II: Results in Brief
We present survey results in response to two questions:
1. What percentage of employers offer benefits?
2. What percentage of employees are offered benefits?
Our analyses include both the number of companies offering benefits and the
number of employees who are offered benefits. The percentages for these two
groups may or may not be similar depending on the number of employees affected
by a company's decision whether to offer a specific benefit. For example, if
there are a total of 10 companies and 7 offer health insurance, then 70 percent
of the employers offer health insurance. Assume that each of the 7 companies
offering health insurance has 1 employee, but each of the 3 other companies have
20 employees. The percentage of employees who are offered health insurance is
only 10 percent (7 out of 67 total employees).
The size of the company and an employee's full- or part-time status are the best
predictors of the availability of benefits.
In 2000, total compensation in Wyoming was comprised of 78.5 percent wages and
salaries and 21.5 percent benefits (see Figure 1).
Section III: Introduction
There is a broad-based need for information on the compensation of workers.
R&P participates in the State/Federal OES program to produce state and local
estimates of wage rates by occupation.1 However, there is presently no similar
program to collect information on employer-provided benefits that would produce
localized estimates of benefit costs to employers or provide workers with
information about the availability of benefit packages. To fill this void,
R&P began developing a mail survey technique in 1999 to estimate the cost of
benefits to Wyoming employers and the number and type of benefits offered to
workers.2 While there are other uses of benefit information produced by the mail
questionnaire strategy, a full accounting of costs and consumption remains the
central consideration.
The federal benefits collection program relies on personal interviews and
extensive collection systems. These are designed to obtain information on actual
spending in large firms by type of benefit paid to each employee over an
extended period. The budget request for the Bureau of Labor Statistics'
Compensation and Working Conditions activity in fiscal year 2002 was $74.1
million. While yielding an accounting of cost information for each benefit
feature across a variety of packages, this data collection strategy is extremely
expensive and does not provide data at the state or local level. To address this
gap, Wyoming’s Benefits Survey can answer cost questions.
Section IV: Developing the
Benefits Program
While working on the 2001 Employee Benefits questionnaire, we kept our research
objectives in mind. We also took a close look at last year's study, which can be
found at <http://doe.state.wy.us/lmi/benefits/ben2toc.htm>, to see what
worked and what did not.
Changes were minor this year. The question regarding retirement plans was
revised. Besides asking whether the employer offers a retirement plan, we now
ask if it is a defined benefit or a defined contribution plan. The question
aimed at identifying the percentage of the retirement plan the employer pays was
changed to ask who pays the contribution with the following options: employer,
employee, or shared.
We also added three benefits to the miscellaneous benefits section. Those were
Relocation assistance, Work-at-home option (telecommuting), and Flex-time.
Under cost of benefits, we eliminated the breakdown between full- and part-time.
Therefore, employers have to report only one number instead of two.
In the 2003 survey, we added questions regarding the participation rate of
employees for retirement and health insurance benefits.
Section V: Drawing the Sample
A stratified random sample of 500 companies was selected each quarter of 2001 to
receive the questionnaire, for a total of 2,000 companies for the year. The
sample was drawn from the most current Quarterly Unemployment Insurance (QUI)
employer database available. This database contains the data reported by
approximately 18,000 employers on a quarterly basis for Unemployment Insurance
purposes. Companies that reported zero employees for all three months and
employers of household employees were excluded from the database and not
included in our sample.
Previously sampled companies were also excluded from the sample. We added the
following data fields: average employment, class size, industry by major
division, and region. The class size is determined by the company's average
employment during the quarter we sampled. The employers were divided into six
different class sizes (see Table 1). The industry by major division was
determined by the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) code assigned to that
employer (see Figure 2). The region is determined by the county code
assigned by the Wyoming Department of Employment (see
Map).
We then selected a random sample stratified by employment size class, industry,
and region for companies with 1 to 99 employees. Each quarter, we sampled 25
percent of the companies with 100 or more employees; by the end of the year, all
338 employers had been sampled. This stratification was necessary to get an
adequate sample because of the small number of large employers in Wyoming. Large
employers are therefore proportionally over-represented in our sample.
Section VI: Results
Response Rates
The overall response rate for 2001 survey was 58.3 percent or 1,166 employers
out of 2,000 surveyed. These 1,166 companies employed a total of 63,031
employees, 80.8 percent of whom were employed full-time and 19.2 percent
part-time (see Figure A-1). Managerial and professional employees held
25.5 percent of those jobs, clerical and technical employees held 30.2 percent,
and production, service, and maintenance employees held 44.3 percent (see Figure
A-2). In the previous year, the percentage breakout by these three
broad occupational groups was 24.7, 25.6, and 49.7, respectively. Additionally,
Figures A-3, A-4, and A-5
show response rates by
employers' size class, region, and industry. The response rate by size class
indicates that employers with 50 or more employees are much less likely to
respond than smaller employers. Statewide employers and employers in the
Northeast are also less likely to respond, as are employers in Wholesale and
Retail Trade.
The results were weighted by response rate for each industry to adjust for
non-response. They were also weighted against the employment for each industry
as estimated in the Current Employment Statistics (CES) program. For
agricultural employees, we used Unemployment Insurance (UI) Covered Employment
data, because CES does not include Agriculture. This was done to account for
employment differences in our sample. In order to adjust for differences in
employing units in each industry, we weighted our sample by units reported for
each industry to UI Covered Employment and also by response rate.
Most Common Benefits
Table B-1 shows that the three benefits employers most frequently
offered to full-time employees were paid vacation (73.0%), paid holidays
(64.2%), and health insurance (63.2%). After one year of employment, the average
number of paid vacation days and paid holidays offered was 8.6 and 7.9 days,
respectively, for full-time employees (see Table
B-10a). To their
part-time employees, employers most often offered a work-at-home option (34.2%),
employee discounts (33.7%), and paid jury duty leave (26.0%). Table B-10b shows
the average number of days of leave offered by industry).
The three benefits full-time employees were offered most often were health
insurance (94.1%), dependent health insurance (92.0%), and paid vacation (91.0%)
(see Table B-5). Part-time employees were offered paid jury duty
leave (50.1%), a retirement plan (42.3%), and an employee discount (36.9%). Keep
in mind that the survey only asked if employees were offered certain benefits.
This does not mean the employees elected to participate in benefits such as
health insurance and retirement plans in which employees may share some of the
costs. The analysis showed that employers on average pay 79.5 percent of health
insurance costs for full-time employees. For dependent health insurance of
full-time employees, the employer contribution was 59.0 percent (see Table
B-9).
Core Benefits
The rest of the analysis will focus on three major benefits: (1) health
insurance, (2) a retirement plan, and (3) paid vacation. An analysis of these
benefits offered to full-time employees by industry reveals that employers in
Government, Wholesale Trade, and Mining are most likely to offer them. (See
Figure 3.) Similarly, larger numbers of employees in these industries
are most likely to be offered these benefits. (See Figure
4.) When it
comes to paid vacation and retirement, Manufacturing also ranks high, exceeding
even Mining (see Table B-2).
There is a significant relationship between benefits and company size. For
full-time employees the occurrence of health insurance, retirement plans, and
paid vacation increases with the size of the company. For example, 99.7 percent
of employees in companies with 100 or more employees were offered health
insurance, compared to only 47.1 percent of full-time employees in companies
with one to four employees (see Table B-7). The same is true for
employers; health insurance was offered to full-time employees by 96.3 percent
of companies with 100 or more employees and by 40.8 percent of companies with
one to four employees (see Table B-3).
As in prior years, region is not a good indicator for determining the likelihood
of benefits being offered. Though companies classified as statewide entities
offer benefits more often, this only confirms that company size is one of the
major indicators for benefits; most (89.7%) companies classified as statewide
have 100 or more employees.
Cost
Employers spent 21.5 percent of total compensation on benefits (see Figure
1). Of this amount, 5.2 percent went to retirement accounts, 6.9 percent to
legally required benefits such as Social Security and Unemployment Insurance,
and 9.5 percent to such benefits as paid leave, health insurance, and
miscellaneous benefits.
Section VII: Conclusion
Full-time employees are much more likely than part-time employees to be offered
benefits. Employees in larger companies are also at an advantage when it comes
to benefits coverage. Being employed in Government, Manufacturing, Mining, or
Wholesale Trade also proves advantageous.
We expect to publish the 2002 Employee Benefits Survey results later in 2003. We
revised the 2003 survey in conjunction with the University of Wyoming.
1Wyoming Department of Employment, Research & Planning,
Wyoming Wage Survey, March 2001.
2This effort was undertaken jointly with the Labor Market Information Centers of the Nebraska Workforce Development,
<http://www.dol.state.ne.us/nwd/center.cfm?PRICAT=4&SUBCAT=4C>, and the South Dakota Department of
Labor, <http://www.state.sd.us/dol/lmic/index.htm>. Other benefits surveys are conducted by research offices in Maine, New Hampshire, and Oklahoma.
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