{"id":441236,"date":"2026-10-30T20:40:16","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T13:40:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/us-employment-cost-index-for-q3-0-8-vs-0-8-expected-441236\/"},"modified":"2026-10-30T20:40:16","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T13:40:16","slug":"us-employment-cost-index-for-q3-0-8-vs-0-8-expected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/us-employment-cost-index-for-q3-0-8-vs-0-8-expected-441236\/","title":{"rendered":"US employment cost index for Q3 +0.8% vs +0.8% expected"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<ul style=\"font-style: normal;font-weight: 400;font-stretch: inherit;font-size: 16px;line-height: inherit;font-size-adjust: inherit;vertical-align: baseline;border: 0;margin: 0 0 20px;padding: 0 0 0 19px;font-family: Inter, InterFallback, serif;text-indent: -3px;letter-spacing: normal;text-transform: none;word-spacing: 0;white-space: normal\">\n<li style=\"font-size-adjust: inherit;vertical-align: baseline;border: 0;margin: 0 0 4px;padding: 0\">Prior quarter was +0.9%<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-size-adjust: inherit;vertical-align: baseline;border: 0;margin: 0 0 4px;padding: 0\">Employment benefits +0.9% vs +1.0% prior quarter<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-size-adjust: inherit;vertical-align: baseline;border: 0;margin: 0 0 4px;padding: 0\">Employment wages +0.7% vs +0.9% prior quarter<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The US Employment Cost Index (ECI) increased by 0.8% q\/q in the third quarter, with both wages and salaries and benefit costs contributing to the increase. Wages and salaries rose 0.7%, while benefit costs increased 0.9% compared with the previous quarter.<\/p>\n<p>On an annual basis, total compensation costs for civilian workers increased by 3.4%, with wages and salaries rising 3.1% and benefit costs accelerating by 3.9%. The figures show that labour cost pressures remain relatively contained, although benefits continue to increase faster than wages.<\/p>\n<p>Looking at private industry, compensation costs also increased by 0.8% q\/q and 3.4% y\/y. However, inflation-adjusted wages and salaries declined by 0.6% over the year, as nominal wage growth is still failing to keep pace with consumer price increases.\u00a0The continued gap between nominal and inflation-adjusted wage growth also highlights the pressure households are facing from higher living costs.<\/p>\n<p>For background, the Employment Cost Index (ECI) is a quarterly report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) that measures the change in the total cost of labor for businesses. The Fed considers the ECI the &#8220;gold standard&#8221; for measuring wage inflation because it is more precise and comprehensive, the only drawback is that it&#8217;s not as timely as the Average Hourly Earnings data.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>                            This article was written by Giuseppe Dellamotta at investinglive.com.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Prior quarter was +0.9% Employment benefits +0.9% vs +1.0% prior quarter Employment wages +0.7% vs +0.9% prior quarter The US Employment Cost Index (ECI) increased by 0.8% q\/q in the third quarter,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":216,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-441236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-market-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/216"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441236\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}