Labor month in review
The
July Review
Injuries in eating and drinking places
Average compensation $23.15 an hour
Women’s earning and education
New productivity series
This issue leads off with William F. Snyders, Jon Weinhagen, and Amy Popick’s account of price changes at the producers’ level in 2001. Most simply put, pricing was tight for producers last year; at the finished goods level, the Producer Price Index fell 1.6 percent overall, mostly in the energy sector. As they trace prices changes back through the intermediate and crude materials stages, not only did the index declines become bigger, they spread to food and the "core" indexes as well.
The rest of the articles are on one aspect or another of consumer expenditure studies. Geoffrey D. Paulin and Yoon G. Lee compare the way single parents—both male and female—spend their money. Single female parents spend often substantially larger shares of their budget on items like food and clothing, while single fathers spend larger share on things that are more discretionary. Much of these differences reflect somewhat higher incomes for the single men.
Paulin and Abby L. Duly do a similar comparison of the spending patterns of pre-retired (working and 55 to 64 years old) and retired (no labor income and 65 to 74 years old) persons. Again, one of the big differences across groups is in income. Not very surprisingly, the pre-retired had higher total incomes, in general because they had substantial average labor earnings. On the expenditure side, conclusions about the role of retirement in expenditure plans were more difficult to draw, in part because of the degree of similarity of pre- and post-retirement patterns that was apparent when variables such as income and demography had been accounted for.
Injuries in eating and drinking places
Approximately 304,000 nonfatal occupational injuries and illnesses occurred in the eating and drinking places industry in 1999, down from about 397,000 in 1992. Most of the on-the-job injuries and illnesses that occur in eating and drinking places tend to be relatively minor. In 1999, about a third involved lost work time, compared with almost half of injuries and illnesses for all private industry workers.
However, there were 147 fatal occupational injuries at eating and drinking places in 1999. Homicides were the leading cause of worker fatalities in the eating and drinking places industry: almost two-thirds of fatalities were homicides in 1999. More information is available in "Occupational Hazards in Eating and Drinking Places," by Timothy Webster, Compensation and Working Conditions.
Average compensation $23.15 an hour
In March 2002, employer costs for employee compensation for civilian workers in the United States averaged $23.15 per hour worked. Wages and salaries, which averaged $16.76, accounted for 72.4 percent of these costs, while benefits, which averaged $6.39, accounted for the remaining 27.6 percent.
Legally required benefits were $1.80 per hour on average, representing the largest nonwage employer cost. Employer costs for insurance benefits were $1.61 per hour, paid leave benefits were $1.59 per hour, and retirement and savings benefits were 80 cents per hour.
For additional information see "Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, March 2002," news release USDL 02–346. Publication of this news release will change to a quarterly basis beginning with June 2002 data.
Earnings for female full-time wage and salary workers vary considerably by educational level. In 2001, those with less than a high school diploma had median earnings of $314 per week. This compares with $784 per week for those with a college degree. Women who graduated high school but did not attend college earned $441 a week at the median, while those with some college or an associate degree earned $525.
Labor productivity—defined as output per hour—increased 3.0 percent from 1999 to 2000 in wholesale trade. This rise was below the 4 percent annual increase for the 1995-2000 period, but exceeded the 2.7- percent annual growth of 1990–95.
These figures are from a new productivity series for the wholesale trade industry introduced this month. In addition, there are now productivity series for durable-goods wholesale trade and nondurable-goods wholesale trade, and for all three-digit SIC (Standard Industrial Classification) industries in wholesale trade. Unit labor costs series are also now available for each of these industries.
The wholesale trade sector includes establishments involved in selling merchandise to retailers; to industrial, commercial, institutional, farm, construction contractors, or professional business users; or acting as brokers in purchases or sales of merchandise between businesses. See "BLS Releases New Series on Productivity and Costs in Wholesale Trade Industries, 1990–2000" news release USDL 02–347.
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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