1. States and the Private Sector

To derive average costs, we used data from BLS' May 2024 National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates for all salary estimates ( https://www.bls.gov/oes/tables.htm ). In this regard, Table 3 presents BLS' mean hourly wage, our estimated cost of fringe benefits and other indirect costs (calculated at 100 percent of salary), and our adjusted hourly wage.

For States and the private sector, the employee hourly wage estimates have been adjusted by a factor of 100 percent. This is a rough adjustment, because both fringe benefits and other indirect costs vary significantly across all employers, and because methods of estimating these costs vary widely across studies. Nonetheless, we believe that doubling the hourly wage to estimate the total cost is a reasonably accurate method.