Labor month in review
The
July Review
Shiskin
awards to two
FLSA
annual report released
Veterans
in the labor market
Young
workers try several jobs
The Producer Price Index for Finished Goods fell in 1997, the first decline on a calendar-year basis in 11 years, according William D. Thomas. Prices for food and energy drove the decline in the finished goods index; the index for finished goods other than those two broad categories was stable over the year. Goods at the intermediate and crude stages of processing fell by 0.8 and 11.7 percent, respectively. Again, the declines reflected changes in the prices of food and energy.
Allison Thomson extends a series of analyses of the employment impact of changes in defense-related spending. Her projections also extend the horizon for job losses in defense-related employment through 2006, albeit at a slowing rate. As Thomson notes, about three-quarters of the projected decline from 1987 to 2006 had been observed by 1996, the halfway point in the period.
Some of the most popular articles in the Review concern employment and unemployment. The article most frequently downloaded from our on-line archives recently, for example, has been the annual employment review from the February issue. Monica D. Castillo looks at a less visible aspect of the labor market—persons outside the labor force who want to work but, for one reason or another, are not currently seeking a job. This group accounted for almost 5 million persons in 1997, and thus represents human resources roughly equivalent in number to employment in wholesale trade.
Also in this issue: a briefing from John Murphy on the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) that will shortly replace the 50-year-old Standard Industrial Classification and a much longer report on a recent conference on the potentials and challenges of creating linked employer-employee data sets.
Julius Shiskin Awards for 1998 were presented to Eva Jacobs, a former Assistant Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and Joseph E. Gastwirth, a professor at George Washington University. Ms. Jacobs was honored for her leadership of the Consumer Expenditure Survey, her use of the survey’s data to interpret economic conditions, and her responsiveness to customer needs. Professor Gastwirth was recognized for his clarification of the statistical properties of the Lorenz curve and other measures of income inequality.
The Julius Shiskin Award was established by the family of the late Commissioner of Labor Statistics. The award is to encourage innovative work in the field of economic statistics.
Last month, the Labor Department released the 1998 report, Minimum Wage and Overtime Hours Under the Fair Labor Standards Act. According to the report, 65 percent of wage and salary workers were covered by the minimum wage provisions of the Act. Overtime provisions (time-and-a-half pay for hours over 40 per week) applied to 61 percent of wage and salary workers.
The majority of workers not covered by the provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act were exempt due to their classification as executive, administrative, or professional employees. Smaller numbers were exempted as outside sales workers or were not subject to the Act.
Vietnam-era veterans who actually served in the Southeast Asia theater had higher unemployment rates than other veterans of the era or their nonveteran counterparts. Nearly half of the 8.2 million men who served on active duty in the U.S. Armed Forces from February 1961 to May 1975 reported service in Southeast Asia. Among such veterans aged 45 to 64, the unemployment rate was 4.0 percent, compared with 2.1 percent among other veterans and 2.6 percent for nonveterans.
As of September 1997, about half of the male veterans of the Vietnam era had participated in veterans’ education and training programs. Of the specific programs veterans reported using, the GI Bill was by far the most frequently mentioned.
For more information, see news release USDL 98–258, "Employment Situation of Vietnam-Era Veterans."
Young workers try several jobs
Workers held an average of nearly nine jobs from ages 18 to 32, according to data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). About half of these job changes occurred before the age of 23. Among those younger workers, it was those who eventually obtained a college degree that usually held more jobs. This is thought to reflect the fact that college students may hold temporary jobs during the summer and part-time jobs during the school year. Among slightly older workers, the number of jobs did not vary much by educational level, as people tended to settle into more stable jobs.
Some of the movement among jobs could be associated with the search for higher earnings. Between the ages of 18 and 22, real hourly earnings (deflated using the research-oriented CPI-UX1) rose 7.4 percent per year. The earnings growth rate slowed to 5.5 percent a year while workers were 23 to 27 years old and eased to 2.6 percent annually from age 28 to 32.
For more information, see news release USDL 98–253, "Number of Jobs, Labor Market Experience, and Earnings Growth: Results from a Longitudinal Survey."
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