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Monthly Labor Review Online

March 1998, Vol. 121, No. 3

Labor month in review

ArrowThe March Review
ArrowRevised CLS tables
ArrowFewer work stoppages in 1997
ArrowWages at home and abroad
ArrowRegional range narrows
ArrowNext month

The March Review

The articles leading this month’s Review examine the complex role of Hispanics in today’s economy. Geoffrey Paulin examines persons of Hispanic origin in their role as consumers. His work rigorously analyzes the existence of statistically significant differences in the general consumption patterns of Hispanic consumers relative to the general population. Peter Cattan’s article focuses on the effect of working wives on the incidence of poverty in Hispanic married-couple families. As one might expect, the addition of the wife’s salary reduces poverty across all sub-groups of Hispanic families, but the effect is especially pronounced among Mexicans and Cubans.
 
Allen J. Scott’s study of the multimedia industry in southern California shows the complex way the proximity of sophisticated customers, in this case the entertainment industry, a rich academic infrastructure, and dense networks of highly competitive employers and employees can establish vigorous, highly localized industrial clusters.
 
Thesia I. Garner, Stephanie Shipp, Kathleen Short, Charles Nelson, and Geoffrey Paulin examine the potential impact of recommendations from a National Research Council panel on the methods used to measure poverty. They find that the revised measure yields a poverty population that looks more like the general population. Under the proposed measure, poor families are more likely to be white, to be married-couple, and to have a member in the labor force.
 
In the latest in a series of studies of earnings and educational attainment, Daniel E. Hecker finds that in 1993 women college graduates earned 82 percent as much as men in the same degree level, major field of study, and age group.

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Revised CLS tables

Consumer Price Index (CPI) data appear in tables 2, 28, 29, and 30 of the Current Labor Statistics department in this issue. These data reflect the recent revision of the CPI program as outlined in the December 1996 Review. The most visible changes include a new market basket of items to be priced and geographic structure of areas in which prices are surveyed.
 
Also, in this issue, a new CLS table 27 presents historical data on employee participation in selected employer-provided benefit plans in State and local government and small private establishments.

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Fewer work stoppages in 1997

The number of major work stoppages—those involving at least 1,000 workers, dropped last year to a record low of 29. These labor disputes, which include worker initiated strikes and lockouts of workers by their employers, affected about 339,000 workers and resulted in almost 4.5 million days of idleness.

More than three-quarters of the year’s lost days stemmed from just four disputes. The United Parcel Service–Teamsters alone accounted for more than 2 million idle days. A dispute between Wheeling Pittsburgh Steel and the United Steelworkers resulted in about three-quarters of a million lost days. Stoppages at General Motors and Chrysler accounted for 360,000 and 307,000 days, respectively, involving members of the United Automobile Workers.

Go to Major Work Stoppages News Release.

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Wages at home and abroad

In a study of 28 foreign economies, trade-weighted hourly compensation costs for production workers in manufacturing edged down to an average of 91 percent of the U.S. cost level in 1996. Labor costs in Europe and Japan remained above U.S. costs, but those in Japan fell below those of Europe for the first time since 1992.

The two countries with the highest dollar compensation costs were Germany and Switzerland at 180 and 160 percent of U.S. costs, respectively. The two lowest cost countries were Sri Lanka (3 percent) and Mexico (8 percent).

Go to International Comparisons of Hourly Compensation Costs for Production Workers in Manufacturing, 1996 News Release.

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Regional range narrows

Unemployment rates dropped in about three-quarter of the States in 1997. All four major regions and 8 of the 9 geographic divisions also recorded declines. North Dakota had the lowest unemployment rate among the States at 2.5 percent, followed by Nebraska, New Hampshire, South Dakota, and Utah. Alaska and the District of Columbia posted the highest rates at 7.9 percent.

At the region and division level, the spread between high and low unemployment rates narrowed in 1997. With an unemployment rate of 4.0 percent, the Midwest region maintained the Nation’s lowest unemployment rate for the seventh year in a row. The West, despite experiencing the largest percentage point decline in regional unemployment, reported the highest rate, 5.6 percent. The 1.6-percentage point spread compares with the 2.0-point range between the highest and lowest regional unemployment rates of 1996.

Go to Regional and State Employment and Unemployment News Release.

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The April Review

Next month’s issue covers wage inequality in the United States and Canada, the earnings of husbands and wives, developments in the trucking industry, and assessing the Consumer Price Index.

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