Labor month in review
The
May Review
Mass layoff statistics restored
Drop in multifactor productivity
Klein Award winners announced
This issue starts off with a special section of briefings on specific categories of consumer expenditures. As is the case with so many surveys, the Consumer Expenditure Survey gets more interesting, certainly, and probably more useful, as it is given tighter focus by an experienced analyst: Abby Duly looks at spending on the necessities of food, housing and apparel; George Janini examines travel expenditures; Eric J. Keil gives an account on out-of-pocket spending on medical services under different insurance plans; Laura Paszkiewicz details the ways different consumers finance vehicle purchases; Geoffrey Paulin analyzes expenditures on beverage alcohol; and Neil Tseng outlines entertainment budgets.
Edward Yelin and Laura Trupin present information from the California Work and Health Survey on employment conditions of workers with disabilities. They find that persons with disabilities were less likely to have jobs, more likely to have a part-time job if they were employed, and more likely to have had experienced a recent job loss. However, employees with disabilities did not differ much, in terms of specific working conditions, from employees without disabilities.
M. Scott Niederjohn looks at regulation, deregulation, employment, and earnings in the electricity sector. He finds that employment has been much more affected than earnings.
Mass layoff statistics restored
Publication of data from the Mass layoff Statistics programs resumed with news release USDL 03–165, "Mass Layoffs in January-February 2003 and Annual Averages for 2002" on April 9, 2003. The MLS program had been discontinued on December 31, 2002, due to lack of funding. In that release, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 20,269 mass layoff events occurred in the Nation in 2002, resulting in 2,244,631 initial claims filings for unemployment insurance. Both measures were lower than in 2001.
The number of initial claims filed in 2002 due to mass layoffs was higher in the West, 745,638, than in any other region. The smallest number of mass-layoff initial claims was reported in the Northeast region, 338,965. Over the year, however, decreases in mass-layoff initial claims occurred in each of the four regions, with the largest decline in the Midwest.
Manufacturing accounted for 35 percent of all mass layoff events and 40 percent of initial claims filed during 2002. A year earlier, manufacturing accounted for 42 percent of such events and 49 percent of claims. Within manufacturing, filings were most numerous in transportation equipment, food production, machinery manufacturing, and computer and electronic products.
The related report, which covers mass layoffs extending longer than 30 days, resumed publication on April 18, 2003. In that release, "Extended Mass Layoffs in the Fourth Quarter of 2002 and Annual Averages for 2002," BLS reported that employers conducted 7,163 extended mass layoff actions, affecting almost 1.5 million workers in 2002. These totals were down from 8,350 events and slightly more than 1.75 million separations in 2001.
In 2002, seasonal work continued to be the most cited reason for layoff, accounting for 32 percent of all layoff events and 37 percent of all separations. Layoff activity due to internal company restructuring was at a level exceeded only in 2001 and occurred largely among general merchandise stores. In all, employers cited this reason in 1,654 events, about 23 percent of the total, resulting in the separation of 375,593 workers, or 25 percent of all extended mass layoffs.
Drop in multifactor productivity
Multifactor productivity—measured as output per unit of combined labor and capital inputs—fell by 1.0 percent in the private nonfarm business sector in 2001. This was the first decrease since 1991. The multifactor productivity decline in 2001 reflected a 0.1-percent decrease in output and a 1.0-percent increase in the combined inputs of capital and labor. Capital services grew by 4.1 percent, while labor input fell by 0.4 percent.
Multifactor productivity measures 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. Additional information is available in "Multifactor Productivity Trends, 2001," news release USDL 03–158.
Each year since 1969, the Lawrence R. Klein Award has honored the best articles appearing in the Monthly Labor Review. The award was established in honor of Lawrence R. Klein, who retired in 1968 after 22 years as editor-in-chief of the Review and established a fund to encourage the highest levels of analysis and writing in the journal’s pages.
This year, from the articles written by BLS authors, the trustees selected "Labor force experience of women from ‘Generation X’" by Marisa DiNatale and Stephanie Boraas of the Office of Employment and Unemployment Statistics (March 2002 issue).
From the articles by authors outside BLS, the trustees selected three articles:
"Work shifts and disability: a national view" by Harriet B. Presser of the University of Maryland and Barbara Altman of the National Center for Health Statistics. (September 2002 issue); "Labor force participation of older women: retired? working? both?" by Elizabeth T. Hill of The Pennsylvania State University (September 2002 issue); and "What is an employee? The answer depends on the law" by Charles J. Muhl of Goldberg, Kohn, Bell, Black, Rosenbloom & Moritz, Ltd. (January 2002 issue).
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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