Ah, but the fade is on purpose, because I wanted to show that while they do have a high "cost of employment", what they truly pocket annually isn't as much. For that, the most important figure is the base salary, which is a solid block. The other things like pension and medical are either money they don't see until the future, or money they don't use unless they have a medical emergency.
Probably thinking of 20-somethings who have no copays or medical deductibles or chronic medical conditions or require medicines. That was my experience in my 20s. I worked at a place for 3 years, people asked me what the insurance was like, told them I never used it, so had no idea. Its a bit different of course, once you have a spouse and a couple kids on the policy, and start getting old, etc.
A properly implemented stealth agism policy (we only employ recent college grads because we're "hi tech", you know how it all goes) could save quite a bit. If you fire everyone once they have kids...
it's actually an efficient way to communicate the nuances going on with the issue. "Reader friendly" would be the quote that the average BART employee makes 80k in pay and benefits. This chart shows you what those figures break down to, emphasizing the base salary while still making you aware of benefits (which are less concrete and uniform in meaning).