Labor month in review
The May
Review
Days lost to injury
Fewer families with unemployment
Most high school grads in labor force
Multifactor productivity rose in 1999
Understanding the impact of electronic business and the digitization of many traditional businesses is going to be a challenge for economic statisticians for years to come. Daniel E. Hecker’s article is a preliminary, qualitative analysis of the potential impacts of these new businesses and business processes. The industries that provide the infrastructure for e-business—hardware, software, telecommunications networks—should generally see higher levels of output and employment. Other industries such as transportation and wholesale trade establishments that support so-called "e-tailing" will also see increase, but they might come at the expense of traditional retailing. In general, there are more circumstances in which stimulus in one industry or occupation is at least partially offset by a dampening impact in another.
William J. Carrington and Bruce C. Fallick investigate the group of workers who have been out of school and in the labor market for some time, but still have earnings at or near the minimum wage. They find, using National Longitudinal Survey data, that about 7 percent of their sample was earning within $.25 of the minimum wage 10 years into their careers and about 12 percent were within a dollar. Carrington and Fallick characterize these shares as "nontrivial" and analyze the characteristics of those workers with minimum wage careers.
David S. Johnson, John M. Rogers, and Lucilla Tan outline the history of family budget studies in the United States. Their article compares the prescriptive and descriptive approaches used to defining family budgets over the past century. They also use data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey to construct a current descriptive budget.
A total of 1.7 million injuries and illnesses that required recuperation away from work beyond the day of the incident were reported in private industry workplaces during 1999. This was about the same total number of these cases as in 1998, following steady declines from the levels prevailing early in the decade.
Since 1993, truck drivers, laborers, and nursing aides and orderlies have experienced the largest number of injuries and illnesses with time away from work. Find out more about lost-time injuries and illnesses in "Lost-worktime Injuries and Illnesses: Characteristics and Resulting Time Away From Work, 1999," USDL news release 01–71.
Fewer families with unemployment
Of the Nation’s 71.7 million families, 5.7 percent reported having an unemployed member in an average week in 2000, a decline of 0.3 percentage point from the previous year. The proportion of black families with an unemployed member in 2000 (10.2 percent) was higher than the proportion for either Hispanic (9.0 percent) or white families (5.0 percent). Hispanic families had the largest drop in unemployment between 1999 and 2000, from 9.7 percent to 9.0 percent. See "Employment characteristics of families in 2000," news release USDL 01–103.
Most high school grads in labor force
About three-fifths of Class of 2000 high school graduates were in the labor force in October of that year. Four out of every five recent high school graduates not enrolled in college were in the labor force in October 2000.
Among the members of the year 2000 high school graduating class who enrolled in college, two-thirds were attending 4-year institutions. Of these students, nearly 40 percent also participated in the labor force by either working or actively looking for employment. Nearly 65 percent of recent high school graduates enrolled in 2-year colleges were in the labor force. Additional information is available from "College Enrollment and Work Activity of 2000 High School Graduates," news release USDL 01–94.
Multifactor productivity rose in 1999
Multifactor productivity—measured as output per unit of combined labor and capital inputs—rose 0.6 percent in the private nonfarm business sector in 1999. This was the eighth consecutive year of growth, but the lowest increase since 1995.
The multifactor productivity gain in 1999 reflected a 4.7-percent increase in output and a 4.1-percent increase in the combined inputs of capital and labor. In 1999, capital services grew 6.6 percent, while labor input grew 2.9 percent. Capital services showed the steepest gain since the series started in 1948.
Multifactor productivity is a measure of the joint influences on economic growth of technological change, efficiency improvements, returns to scale, reallocation of resources, and other factors. Multifactor productivity, therefore, differs from the labor productivity (output per hour) measures that are published quarterly by BLS because it requires information on capital services and other data that are not available on a quarterly basis. Additional information is available in "Multifactor Productivity Trends, 1999," news release USDL 01–82.
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