Gu, Weishi; Prasad, Eswar S. - 2021
Employer-provided nonwage benefit expenditures now account for one-third of U.S. firms' labor costs. We show that a … broad measure of real labor costs including such benefit expenditures has become countercyclical during 1982-2014, contrary … to the conventional view that labor costs are procyclical. Using BLS establishment-job data, we find that even real wages …