Labor month in review
The March
Review
Students at work
New service-sector productivity measures
Union membership rate declines
International productivity estimates revised
If the prices of energy and food could be ignored, prices for consumer commodities dropped 1.5 percent in 2002, the largest calendar-year decline since 1958, according to Todd Wilson’s review of last year’s consumer price movements. Of course, both energy and food do count, and prices for all commodities rose 1.2 percent over the year. At the very top side, including food, energy, and services as well as commodities, the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) rose 2.4 percent in 2002.
Stephanie Boraas and William M. Rodgers III revisit the issue of the degree to which the gap between male and female earnings can be explained by the share of women in workers’ occupation. They find that this factor was the largest contributor to the gender pay gap in 1999.
Jessie X. Fan, Deanna L. Sharpe, and Goog-Soog Hong use Consumer Expenditure Survey data to analyze health care and prescription drug spending by households in which the reference person for the survey was age 65 years or older. One central finding was that among such households, those that had purchased health insurance in addition to Medicare also tended to be the households that spent most out of pocket for prescription drugs.
About 60 percent of students who were age 16 at the beginning of the 1999–2000 school year worked at an employee job both during the school year and during the following summer. Among those age 17, about 68 percent of students worked an employee job both during school and in the summer, while among those age 18, the figure was 77 percent. The survey respondents were ages 12 to 17 when first interviewed in 1997 and ages 15 to 21 when interviewed for a fourth time in 2000–01. Students with "employee" jobs have a formal relationship with a particular employer, such as a restaurant or supermarket. For more information, see news release USDL 03–40, "Employment Experience Of Youths During the School Year and Summer."
New service-sector productivity measures
The Bureau of Labor Statistics released newly-developed labor productivity and related measures for two transportation industries—local trucking without warehousing and public warehousing and storage—and four services industries—advertising agencies, prepackaged soft-ware, truck rental and leasing, and passenger car rental. All six industries posted labor productivity gains (as measured by output per hour) for the 1990–2000 period. These gains ranged from an annual average gain of 14.2 percent in prepackaged software to a modest average yearly increase of 1.2 percent in public warehousing and storage. In 4 of these 6 service-sector industries, however, output per hour grew more slowly in 1995–2000 than in 1990–1995. Find out more information in "New Transportation and Service Productivity Measures," BLS Report 964 (PDF 86K).
Union membership rate declines
In 2002, 13.2 percent of workers were union members, down from 13.4 percent in 2001. The number of persons belonging to a union fell by 280,000 to 16.1 million. The union membership rate has declined steadily from 20.1 percent in 1983, the earliest year for which com-parable data are available.
Among private industries, the union membership rate was the highest in transportation and public utilities in 2002, at 23 percent. Of all wage and salary workers in private industry, 8.5 percent were union members in 2002. The construction and manufacturing industries also had higher-than-average unionization rates, at 17.2 percent and 14.3 percent, respectively. The industry with the lowest unionization rate in 2002 was finance, insurance, and real estate—1.9 percent. Find out more in "Union Members in 2002," news release USDL 03–88.
International productivity estimates revised
In 2001, output per hour in manufacturing declined in Canada, Japan, and the United States, according to revised estimates. Labor productivity (measured by output per hour) was unchanged in Sweden, and it grew in the remaining nine economies for which comparable data are available.
Korea and Taiwan recorded the largest productivity gains, while Canada and Japan recorded the largest declines. In all, the manufacturing productivity estimates were revised upward for five nations and downward for three and were unchanged for four. Data for the Netherlands for 2001 were reported for the first time. Additional information is available in "International Comparisons of Manufacturing Productivity and Unit Labor Cost Trends, Revised Data for 2001," news release USDL 03–89.
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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