September 21, 2001 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Working more than one job in 2000

Last year, 5.6 percent of U.S. workers held more than one job, down from 5.8 percent in 1999.

Multiple jobholders as a percentage of total employment by State, 1999 and 2000 annual averages
[Chart data—TXT]

States continued to show considerable variation in multiple jobholding rates around the U.S. average, as well as a clear geographic pattern from North to South. For example, all seven States in the West North Central division had multiple jobholding rates at least 2.0 percentage points higher than that of the United States. Nebraska and North Dakota were the only States to record double-digit rates—10.3 and 10.0 percent, respectively.

By contrast, 7 of the 11 States with multiple jobholding rates below 5.0 percent were along the southern U.S. border. Florida, at 3.9 percent, had the lowest rate in the Nation.

The multiple jobholding statistics are prepared by the Local Area Unemployment Statistics program using data from the Current Population Survey . Multiple jobholders are employed persons who had either two or more jobs as a wage and salary worker, were self-employed and also held a wage and salary job, or worked as an unpaid family worker and also held a wage and salary job. Find out more information on multiple jobholding by State in "Regional Trends," Monthly Labor Review, July 2001.

Happy 10th Birthday, TED!

The very first issue of The Editor's Desk (TED) was posted on September 28, 1998. TED was the first online-only publication of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For 10 years, BLS has been committed to posting a new TED article each business day, for a total of over 2,400 articles so far.

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