Nondiscrimination regulations, administrative costs, and fairness considerations can constrain the within-firm distribution of benefits. Using novel job-level data on nonwage benefits, we find a larger firm component of the variation in benefits than wages. We show that the presence of high-wage colleagues (or high-wage peers in other local firms) positively predicts workers’ benefits, controlling for job characteristics including own wages. Firms with more generous benefits attract and retain more high-wage workers, but also reduce their reliance on low-wage workers more than low-benefit peers. Our results suggest that benefits disproportionately matter for worker-firm matching and, hence, compensation

inequality.