Topic: Help me make sense of Labour Costs (Read 831 times)

Hello all,

I am trying to determine how the cost of employment is changing year over year. In other words, if I wanted to hire the average American to do an hour worth of work right now, how much more/less expensive would it be than if I wanted to hire the average American to do an hour of work 2 years ago? Note: I'm looking for TOTAL COST. This means ALL the costs of hiring a person, including insurance, benefits, etc... NOT just wages.

Why do I want this? Because obamacare, among other things.

Now I've found two different places to get this information, and they give drastically different answers. The only logical possibilities are either (A) corruption or (B) I don't know what I'm looking at.

Observe:
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/eci.t01.htm (Source: US Agency)
These guys show the cost of employment going up about 0.5% each quarter, leading to a huge 2% increase in the cost of labour, or even more.

Compare to:
SUPER LONG LINK (Source: International Labour Org.)
These guys show a different story, and more volatile too. Also, there's a typo (lol). Its supposed to be 22.3 but its written 12.3 for 2011.

Which is more trustworthy/comprehensive? Is there some better source?

In other news, apparently the mechanics used to be making an assload of money but no longer do. The best jobs are technical, followed by financial. The worst jobs are hospitality related, with artistic jobs being a close second.