Just a guess here but I'm pretty sure mosts businesses calculate labor costs as the costs they pay their own employees, but looking at labor costs as a means to analyze society means you probably need to include the labor portion of services they receive from other companies (delivery drivers, factory workers who make the business's machines, ag workers who planted and hargested the food, marketing guys who come up with ad campaigns for them, etc) if counting whenever someone is getting a wage or salary somewhere in the supply chain, I could see the number being way higher than what the business owner defines it as.