Labor month in review
The
June Review
Katharine Abraham
receives Shiskin Award
Jobless rate 35.9 percent for dropouts
Elderly budget greatest share on housing
On an increasingly interconnected and rapidly shrinking globe, the important issue for policymakers is not simply how well the economy is doing, but how well is the economy doing relative to its global partners and competitors. This issue, led by Patricia Capdevielle and Mark Sherwood’s summary of the need for international comparisons and the programmatic responses at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is devoted to ways to answer those questions.
Constance Sorrentino and Joyanna Moy examine the similarities and differences among the U.S. labor market and those in other countries. One important difference they note between European and North American labor markets is in the duration of unemployment. A higher proportion of the unemployed in Europe are long-term unemployed at any stage of the business cycle. "Thus," say the authors, "the burden of unemployment tends to fall on a smaller portion of the population in Europe, while in the United States and Canada, a greater percentage of the population experiences a spell of unemployment over the course of a year."
Chris Sparks, Theo Bikoi, and Lisa Moglia examine the critical competitive variable of compensation costs in manufacturing across countries. They conclude, "Over the past 25 years, the U.S. competitive position with regard to hourly compensation costs has improved relative to competitors, especially Japan and Europe, despite some deterioration over the final 5 years of the 20th century."
Aaron Cobet and Gregory Wilson survey comparative productivity trends in the manufacturing sector. Looked at over the last half of the 20th century, labor productivity in the factory increased less in the United States and Canada than in other industrial countries. Most of the difference can be attributed to the 1950–73 period. After 1973, growth in U.S. productivity actually accelerated while there were much slower rates of productivity growth in most other industrial economies.
Katharine Abraham receives Shiskin Award
Katharine G. Abraham, Professor of Survey Methodology and Affiliate Professor of Economics with the Joint Program for Survey Methodology at the University of Maryland, and formerly Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is the recipient of the 2002 Julius Shiskin Award for Economic Statistics.
Dr. Abraham has written extensively on labor-market subjects including the effects of job duration on wages, the effects of advertising on job vacancies, wages and the business cycle, and comparisons among the United States, European, and Japanese labor markets.
As Commissioner from 1993 through 2001, Dr. Abraham instituted improvements in consumer, producer, and international price statistics, and employment and wage statistics. During the public debate on the Consumer Price Index, Dr. Abraham steered a careful course of studying shortcomings and making revisions based on objective research. She expanded coverage of the prices of services in the Producer Price Index and instituted improvements in the Current Employment Statistics program, including the substitution of a probability sample for the quota sample.
The Julius Shiskin Award was established in 1979 by the Washington Statistical Society and is now co-sponsored with the National Association of Business Economists and the Business and Economics Statistics Section of the American Statistical Association. It is given in recognition of unusually original and important contributions in the development of economic statistics or in the use of economic statistics in interpreting the economy.
Jobless rate 35.9 percent for dropouts
While more than 60 percent of high school graduates enrolled in college between October 2000 and October 2001, slightly more than half a million youths dropped out of high school during the same period. The unemployment rate for these dropouts was 35.9 percent in October 2001—a full 15 percentage points higher than the rate for recent high school graduates who were not enrolled in college.
Just more than two-thirds of young white dropouts were in the labor force, either working or looking for work, as were about 70 percent of Hispanic dropouts. The unemployment rate among white dropouts was 32.4 percent, about the same as the rate of 32.6 percent for Hispanic dropouts. Not quite half of black dropouts were in the labor force in October 2001; just more than half of those labor force participants had jobs. Additional information is available from "College Enrollment and Work Activity of 2001 High School Graduates," news release USDL 02–288.
Elderly budget greatest share on housing
Households headed by someone 75 or older spent a higher share of their expenditures on housing than any other age group in 1999. The 75-and-older group spent 35.9 percent of expenditures on housing, compared with 32.6 percent for all households. Those under age 25 allocated the smallest share for housing, at 30.3 percent of annual expenditures. Households headed by a person aged 55 to 64 spent 30.7 percent of their budget on housing. Find out more in "Housing Expenditures" (PDF 132K), Issues in Labor Statistics, BLS Summary 02–02.
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