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Wyoming Department of Workforce Services

Research & Planning
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Wyoming Labor Force Trends

September 2023 | Volume 60, No. 9


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New Publication from R&P: Wyoming Benefits Survey 2022

Article | Tables and Figures


by: Lisa Knapp, Senior Research Analyst

 

This new publication examines the prevalence of employer-provided benefits, such as insurance, retirement plans, and paid leave in Wyoming. These benefits are analyzed in several ways: by full- and part-time employment status, employer size class, industry, and by Wyoming substate region.

 

The Research & Planning (R&P) section of the Wyoming Department of Workforce Services conducts the Wyoming Benefits Survey on a quarterly basis. This survey is designed to collect information about the types of benefits Wyoming employers offer their employees. The questionnaire is sent to a random sample of employers drawn from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) database. Generally, at least 70% of these questionnaires are completed and returned.

The results of the benefits survey typically are published annually in a report. However, this survey was not conducted during the first part of the Covid-19 pandemic, because so many businesses were closed or operating with a limited number of staff. As such, there is a break in the publishable data from third quarter 2019 (2019Q3) to first quarter 2022 (2022Q1), which is observable in the time series section of the report.

The estimates presented in the benefits report are based on the average employment in the state during the target survey quarter and the preceding seven quarters and are calculated using data collected during those eight quarters. The estimates calculated for this publication used data collected between 2020Q2 and 2021Q1. For more information about the sampling and estimation process used to create the benefits survey estimates, please see http://doe.state.wy.us/LMI/benefits2013/benefits_2013.pdf.

This publication includes a selection of tables containing data for employers and the total number of jobs (or workers), broken out by full- and part-time work status, employer size class (the number of employees working for a business), industry, and Wyoming substate region.

Some of the key findings of this report include:

  • A larger proportion of employers offered benefits to their full-time employees than their part-time employees. For example, 46.2% of employers offered health insurance to their full-time employees compared to 5.1% of those that offered the benefit to their part-time employees. Similarly, 37.7% of employers offered dental insurance to their full-time employees compared to 4.9% that offered it to their part-time employees.
  • In general, as an employer’s size class (number of employees) increased, so did the percentage of employers who offered benefits to their employees (see Figure 1). For example, while only 23.3% of employers with one to four employees offered health insurance to their employees, 50.2% of those with 10 to 19 employees and 87.5% of those with 50 or more employees offered the benefit. Likewise, 27.1% of the smallest employers offered retirement plans to their employees while 58.0% of employers with 10 to 19 employees and 82.9% of the largest employers offered it.
  • Both the proportion of employers who offered benefits and the proportion of employees offered benefits varied by industry. For example, 55.8% of employers in natural resources and mining, 61.2% of employers in wholesale trade, 53.6% of those in education, and 87.0% of employers in state and local government offered health insurance. In comparison, only 25.9% of employers in construction, 26.0% of those in financial activities, and 20.0% of those in leisure & hospitality offered the benefit.
  • Although the proportion of employers that offered dental, health, dependent health, and vision insurance decreased between 2012 and 2017, it increased again between 2018 and 2022.

The full Wyoming Benefits Survey 2022 report is available online at https://doe.state.wy.us/LMI/benefits.htm.