Effective planning and control of labor costs are essential ingredients in an overall program of profit planning and control. Labor costs include all expenditures for employees, from top executives down to unskilled laborers. Direct labor costs include the wages paid to employees who work directly on the company’s product, while indirect labor costs refer to the costs of other employees who do not work directly on the product. In budgeting direct labor costs, it is necessary to estimate both the quantity of labor that will be required and the rate that will be paid per hour for the various classes of labor. Time and motion studies and learning curves are among the techniques used to estimates the quantity of labor that will be required in the production process.