September 2003, Vol. 126, No. 9
Labor month in review
The September
Review
Summer jobs more scarce, summer school more common
Where’s the high-tech?
Whatever differences there are among the industrialized countries, they share many of the same trends in the evolution of the family. Gary Martin and Vladimir Kats have chronicled the trends in demographics, living arrangements, marriage and divorce, fertility, and employment that affect family life. Many of these trends—declining fertility, aging populations, increasing rates of out-of-wedlock births, rising age at first marriage—were chronicled in these pages more than a decade ago and continue to have an impact today. "Accompanying these trends," say Martin and Kats, "and not entirely unrelated to them, has been a dramatic increase in the employment of women, particularly women in the prime child bearing and child rearing years of 25-44." The similarity of these trends across international borders seems to reflect the countries’ similar stage of economic development and belie their cultural and other differences.
Paul E. Gabriel uses National Longitudinal Survey data to look at occupational mobility patterns in the cohort of full-time workers aged 25 to 32 in 1990. As these workers approached the middle years of their careers, their occupational classes became increasingly stable. In particular, there was a decline in the downward mobility of persons in high-wage occupations, but there was also a leveling-off in the upward mobility rate of persons in low-wage occupations.
Steven E. Haugen reports on the 2.2 million workers with wages at or below the minimum wage, a group that makes up about 3 percent of all hourly-paid workers. Marie-Claire Guillard brings a local perspective to the issue in her report on pay at the regional and State levels.
Summer jobs more scarce, summer school more common
The number of employed youth 16 to 24 years old increased by 2.1 million from April to July 2003, the traditional summertime peak for youth employment. This year’s summertime expansion in youth employment was somewhat smaller than last year’s 2.4 million increase. Unemployment among youth increased by 628,000 between April and July 2003; this was the largest summer-season increase since 1998. In July, there were 3.2 million youth unemployed and the youth unemployment rate was 13.3 percent. (Because this analysis focuses on the actual seasonal changes in youth employment and unemployment that occur every spring and summer, the data are not seasonally adjusted.)
The labor force participation rate for youth—the proportion of the population age 16 to 24 working or looking for work—was 67.3 percent in July, down from 69.5 percent a year earlier. The over-the-year decrease in the youth labor force participation rate may reflect, at least in part, the continuing weakness in the labor market in 2003. However, the participation rate for youth in July has been on the decline for a number of years, perhaps in response to increases in school enrollment during the summer.
In July 2003, 25.5 percent of 16- to 24-year-olds were enrolled in school, up from 16.3 percent in July 1994, and participation rates for students are typically lower than for non-students. Only about half of the youth enrolled in school in July 2003 were in the labor force, compared with almost three-fourths of youths not in school. For more information, see "Employment and Unemployment among Youth—Summer 2003," news release USDL 03-412.
San Jose, California, had the highest concentration of high-tech workers in the United States in 2001 among metropolitan areas, with just over 10 percent of workers employed in high-tech occupations. Boulder-Longmont, Colorado, had the next highest share, at just below 10 percent, followed by Melbourne-Titusville-Palm Bay, Florida, which had a high-tech employment share of about 7 percent.
Average annual wages in 2001 for high-tech occupations in the 10 metropolitan areas with the highest concentrations of high-tech workers ranged from $48,120 in Melbourne-Titusville-Palm Bay, Florida, to $79,800 in San Jose, California. In all of these areas, the high-tech occupations had wages at least 50 percent higher than the average for non-high-tech occupations.
The term "High-tech workers" is defined for this analysis as workers in 36 occupations utilizing new technologies to the greatest extent. This list of high-tech occupations includes computer-related occupations, engineers, scientists, technicians, technologists, and multimedia artists and animators. See Occupational Employment and Wages, 2001, BLS Bulletin 2559, for more information.
Communications regarding the Monthly Labor Review may be sent to the Editor-in-Chief by e-mail to mlr@bls.gov, by mail at 2 Massachusetts Avenue NE, Room 2850, Washington, DC, 20212, or by fax to (202) 691–7890.
Within Monthly Labor Review Online:
Welcome | Current
Issue | Index | Subscribe
| Archives
Exit Monthly Labor Review Online:
BLS Home | Publications & Research
Papers
