Raphael Bohne
Research expert covering professional services
Employee benefits in the U.S. - statistics & facts
The job market in the United States has remained relatively unstable over the last several years. Higher expectations of wages and employment benefits within this context have meant that a record number of the U.S. population quit their jobs in 2022, with this number remaining high in 2023. As average annual real wages in the United States have hardly risen over the last two decades, particularly when aligned with inflation, the main factors contributing to recruiting and retention challenges have left Human Relation departments with much to think about.
As political debate concerning union membership and unions in the United Sates has continued to blaze, employee benefits remain an integral part of discourse when it comes to progressive policy making. With the annual number of non-business bankruptcy cases filed in the United States on the increase in 2023, it is likely that the recognition of employee benefits will continue to be a core political, social, and economic issue in the upcoming years.
Benefits of union membership for employees
The number of employees represented by unions in the United States has declined sharply since the 1980s. Union membership has risen during times of financial crisis, with the most noticeable and recent example being in 2008. This is because unions have provided access to some level of financial stability for a share of the U.S. workforce and this becomes more necessary in times of economic decline. The share of union workers with access to federal benefits outweighed non-union workers in every category, including medical care, paid sick leave, and life insurance. This has meant that union workers' average costs to employer for private industry worker benefits almost doubled that of non-union workers in 2023.Changing expectations in the workplace and beyond
As workplace expectations and economic instability have had a large say in conversations to do with the U.S. workforce in recent years, so have discussions surrounding the share of employees who would quit their job for access to benefits. As working habits have changed, the average number of days per week in which employees worked from home in the United States and Europe has been expected to rise by 200 percent compared to pre-pandemic levels. In addition to this, approval of labor unions in the United States had been rising since 2016 and reached record levels in 2022, however this figure fell by four percent in 2023. Those disapproving of labor unions have been in sharp decline since 2012.As political debate concerning union membership and unions in the United Sates has continued to blaze, employee benefits remain an integral part of discourse when it comes to progressive policy making. With the annual number of non-business bankruptcy cases filed in the United States on the increase in 2023, it is likely that the recognition of employee benefits will continue to be a core political, social, and economic issue in the upcoming years.
