Labor month in review
The January
Review
One in four volunteer
High and low paying jobs in 2001
Work experience in 2001
The legal matrix of the labor market is a key to understanding industrial relations, collective bargaining, and labor force trends. As usual, our summaries of State labor law changes in legislation are presented in three sections: general employment law, unemployment insurance legislation, and legislative developments in workers’ compensation.
Richard R. Nelson again summarizes legislative enactments in State employment law. As has been the case in most years, States’ minimum wages received widespread attention. Most minimum wage legislation involved specific increases in the statutory rate, but as is so often is the case, the exceptions are interesting. One State prohibited its jurisdictions from establishing a minimum wage that exceeds the Federal standard, while another was the first to legislate an indexed minimum wage. (One State’s rate had earlier been indexed by means of a ballot initiative.)
Glenn Whittington outlines developments in workers’ compensation law, including provisions in New Jersey and New York to expand coverage of workers involved in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Loryn Lancaster and Anne Vogel review unemployment insurance legislation. While there were many changes at the State level, perhaps the most important legislative actions were those by the Federal Government in establishing a program to provide additional weeks of benefits to unemployed workers.
About 59 million people did volunteer work at some point from September 2001 to September 2002. Slightly more than 1 in 4 persons age 16 and older volunteered. The incidence of volunteering was higher among women (31.1 percent) than among men (23.8 percent). This relationship held across age groups, education levels, and other major characteristics.
College graduates had the highest volunteer rate among educational attainment groups. Among persons 25 years of age and older, 43.6 percent of college graduates volunteered during the year. This was double the volunteer rate of high school graduates with no college experience and more than four times the rate of high school dropouts.
Volunteers spent a median of 52 hours doing volunteer activities, with most volunteers providing services through or for one or two organizations. The main organization—the group for which the volunteer worked the most hours during the year—for the majority of volunteers was either religious (33.9 percent) or educational or youth-service related (27.2 percent). Another 12.1 percent of volunteers performed activities mainly for social or community service organizations, and 8.6 percent volunteered the most hours for hospitals or other health organizations.
High and low paying jobs in 2001
The highest paying major groups of occupations in 2001 were the management occupations group and the legal occupations group. Wage and salary workers in management occupations had a mean hourly wage of $34.04, while those in legal occupations had an average wage of $33.19. The next highest paid groups were computer and mathematical ($29.02), architecture and engineering ($27.08), and business and financial operations ($24.32).
The occupational groups with the lowest average wages in 2001 were the food preparation and serving related occupations, farming, fishing, and forestry occupations, building and grounds cleaning and maintenance occupations, and personal care and service occupations. Three of these four groups had average wages of less than $10.00 per hour. Food preparation and serving jobs averaged $8.04 per hour. Farming, fishing, and forestry workers earned $9.44 per hour and those in building and grounds cleaning and maintenance averaged $9.80. Personal care and service jobs paid $10.10 per hour. In each of these four groups except for building and grounds cleaning and maintenance, more than half of all workers earned less than $8.50 per hour.
Overall, 152.3 million persons worked or looked for work at some time in 2001. Of these, a total of 150.3 million persons worked at some point during the year, somewhat fewer than in 2000. The proportion of the working age population that was employed at some point during the year was 69.3 percent, down from 70.4 percent in 2000. Among men, 76.1 percent worked at some point during 2001, down from 77.2 percent. Among women, the share experiencing employment fell to 63 percent in 2001 from 64 percent.
Of those who participated in the labor force in 2001, 15.8 million experienced some unemployment during the year, 2.8 million more than the year before. The "work-experience unemployment rate" in 2001 was 10.4 percent, 1.8 percentage points higher than in 2000. Among those who experienced unemployment in 2001, the median number of weeks unemployed was 13.7, up from 12.4 weeks the year before. About 2 million of those who had looked for a job in 2001 did not work at all during the year. Of the 13.8 million persons who worked during the year and also experienced unemployment, about one in four had two or more spells of joblessness.
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
