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How much do Fortune 500 companies pay on average for employee benefits? (health insurance, FSA, 401(k) and matching, wellness programs, leadership development etc.) Please include as many specific examples as possible.
Hello, and thank you for your question about how much Fortune 500 companies pay on average in employee benefits. The short answer is that after searching through corporate websites, industry reports, government reports and trusted media sites, we've determined that the information you requested in not available because Fortune 500 companies have not publicly disclosed how much they spend on employee benefits. In addition, we could not find enough hard data to triangulate an average amount spent by Fortune 500 companies on employee benefits. However, we did find some insight into the employee benefits package offered by Google as well as information on the overall current trends in employee benefits. Below you will find a deep dive into our findings, including methodology.
METHODOLOGY
We consulted industry reports, government websites and databases, and trusted media sites using a number of search terms including by not limited to: "how much do employers spend of 401k," "Employer benefit costs," "how much do employees cost fortune 500 companies," etc. We conducted X-ray Google searches of individual Fortune 500 companies, including Google and Chevron. Finally, we attempted to triangulate the data from other existing statistics, but we were unable to find specific information from which we could base a triangulation.
HELPFUL FINDINGS
While conducting x-ray searches of Fortune 500 companies, we located some information that, while not complete enough to provide you with a direct answer to your question, may still provide insight into Fortune 500 companies and what they spend on employee benefits.
FORTUNE 500 EMPLOYEE BENEFIT SPENDING
Google is well-known for its employee perks and is considered one of the most innovative employment packages available. Business Insider reports that their employee perks include ATM access, many employee programs such as the gTalent Show and Holiday Fairs, mobile libraries, bike repair, car wash and oil change facilities, dry cleaning, salon services, organic delivery service, concierge services, massages chairs, nap pods, onsite laundry, loaner electric vehicles, free food, shuttle service, subsidized child care and more. Although Business Insider does not list the amount Google pays for these employee perks, we did locate the amount of money Google spends on its employee Free Food program: $72,288,000 per year.
We also located a list of employee benefits offered by Chevron. There is no information on the web page about how much the program costs the company, either for an individual or company-wide. As it may still provide you with some insight, we have included the source here.
EMPLOYER COST FOR COMPENSATION ACROSS INDUSTRIES
A June 2017 report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics states the average employer cost for employee compensation across all industries is $35.28 per hour of which 68.3% is wages and salaries and 31.7% is other benefits. Across just private industries, this number dropped to $33.11 per hour. While this is not limited to just Fortune 500 companies, it does provide some insight into national trends.
TRENDS IN EMPLOYEE BENEFITS
A February 2016 article in Business Insurance says only about 20% of Fortune 500 companies offered their salaried employees a benefit plan in 2015. Nearly 50% of the Fortune 500 offered a benefit plan to salaried workers in 2005. The reasons given in the article for the drastic decline over the last 10 years include employees living longer, "escalating Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. insurance premium rates" and frustration on the part of the companies with the constantly changing contribution requirements. The most Fortune 500 companies that offered benefit packages in 2015 were in the energy sector (55%) while only 9.0% of healthcare companies in the Fortune 500 offered benefit plans to their salaried employees.
For the Fortune 500 companies that may offer employee training as a benefit, data from the 2016 Training Industry Report shows that overall company spending remained flat. The increase from 2015 to 2016 rose only 0.5% from $70.60 billion to $70.65 billion.
Information published in 2016 in Fortune Health says that employer-paid health insurance is becoming a thing of the past. Fortune says that in 2001, about 34% of their "best" companies paid for healthcare for their employees. That number has dropped to about 9.0%. The main driver for this decrease is the increased cost of healthcare. However, one benefit of this trend away from employer-paid health insurance is that it allows companies to "tailor overall benefits to each employee better." Economist John Goodman, founder of the Goodman Institute for Public Policy said, "Companies are trying to individualize their benefits. Instead of giving a benefit that's really valuable to one person but not another, they're really trying to narrow it in."
CONCLUSION
To wrap it up, after extensive searching, a direct answer to your question is not available because Fortune 500 companies have not released the amount they spend on employee compensation. However we did find some insight into the employee benefits package offered by Google as well as information on the overall current trends in employee benefits.
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