September 2006, Vol. 129, No. 9
Labor month in review
The
September Review
Work fatalities
Displaced workers
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Labor month in review from past issues
The soccer moms of the 1990s have watched their players grow to college age and seen their parents grow older and more in need of support. Charles Pierret uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Young Women to see how many of those women, who were 14 to 26 years old at the end of 1967, have become active providers of resources, time and/or money, to both their children and their parents. Pierret finds that such a "sandwich generation" could comprise as few as 1 percent of the group or as much as 33 percent, depending on what definitions one uses. His central result is that 9 percent of these women are giving a significant amount of care to both their children and their parents, and are thus charter members of the sandwich generation.
Abraham Mosisa reports that second-generation American workers have labor force participation and unemployment rates quite similar to those whose families have been in the country for three generations or more.
Thesia I. Garner, George Janini, William Passero, Laura Paszkiewicz, and Mark Vendemia make a painstakingly detailed comparison of the differences between the Consumer Expenditure Survey and estimates of personal consumption expenditure.
Bettina H. Aten works out a more economical method for making estimates of price levels in the local areas that are part of the Consumer Price Index sample.
A total of 5,702 fatal work injuries were recorded in the United States in 2005, down about 1 percent from the revised total of 5,764 fatal work injuries recorded in 2004. The rate at which fatal work injuries occurred in 2005 was 4.0 per 100,000 workers, down slightly from a rate of 4.1 per 100,000 in 2004.
Of the 5,702 fatal work injuries recorded in 2005, 5,188 (or 91 percent) occurred in private industry. Service-providing industries in the private sector accounted for 48 percent of all fatal work injuries in 2005, while goods-producing industries accounted for 43 percent. Another 9 percent of the fatal work injuries in 2005 involved government workers.
A total of 29 work-related fatalities were attributable to hurricanes and their aftermath in 2005. Hurricane-related fatalities were concentrated in three States桵ississippi (10 fatalities), Louisiana (8 fatalities), and Florida (8 fatalities). Of the 29 cases identified by the fatality census, 9 involved workers who were struck by objects, 8 involved transportation-related incidents, and 5 resulted from falls. For more information on fatal work injuries, see "National Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries in 2005," news release USDL 06�64.
During the January 2003 through December 2005 period, 3.8 million workers were displaced from jobs they had held for at least 3 years. Of those long-tenured workers displaced during the January 2003 through December 2005 period, 49 percent lost or left their jobs due to plant or company closings or moves, 29 percent reported that their position or shift was abolished, and 22 percent cited insufficient work as the reason for being displaced. The proportion of displaced workers reporting plant closings or moves was up slightly from the prior survey, and the share citing insufficient work was down.
Displacements in manufacturing made up 28 percent of the 3.8 million long-tenured workers who were displaced from their jobs during the 2003� period; long-tenured workers are those who had held their jobs for at least 3 years. Displacements in wholesale and retail trade (508,000) accounted for 13 percent of all long-tenured workers displaced during the 2003� period. Long-tenured displaced workers in professional and business services (406,000) made up 11 percent of the total.
The reemployment rate for displaced manufacturing workers (65 percent) was lower than the overall reemployment rate for displaced workers (70 percent). Reemployment rates for workers displaced from jobs in the transportation and utilities industry and in the financial activities industry (77 percent each) were above average. (Workers were not necessarily reemployed in the same industries from which they were displaced.) To learn more about displaced workers, see "Worker Displacement, 2003�05," news release USDL 06�54.
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.
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