August 10, 2000 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)
Risk of displacement remains highest in manufacturing
From January 1997 through December 1999, 3.3
million workers were displaced from jobs they had held for at least 3
years. The number of displaced workers was about the same as the 3.6
million recorded 2 years earlier in a survey that measured job losses from
January 1995 through December 1997.
![Share of displaced workers and share of total employment, by industry, 1997-99](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20120925014655im_/http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/images/2000/Aug/wk1/art04.gif)
[Chart data—TXT]
As was the case in prior surveys,
manufacturing continued to make up the largest share of displaced workers.
Over the 1997-99 period, 1.0 million factory workers lost jobs, accounting
for about 1 in every 3 displacements. This was about twice manufacturing's
share of employment.
Substantial numbers of workers were displaced from service-producing
industries as well. Displacements in wholesale and retail trade (616,000)
and in finance, insurance, and real estate (245,000) accounted for 19 and
8 percent, respectively, of all workers displaced over the 1997-99 period.
For both, this was more than their share of employment, indicating that
workers in these industries had an above-average risk of being displaced.
These data are a product of the Current
Population Survey. Displaced
workers are defined as persons 20 years of age and older who lost or left
jobs because their plant or company closed or moved, there was
insufficient work for them to do, or their position or shift was
abolished. Get more information in Worker
Displacement in the Late 1990s,
News Release USDL 00-223.
Of interest
Spotlight on Statistics: National Hispanic Heritage Month
In this Spotlight, we take a look at the Hispanic labor force—including labor force participation, employment and unemployment, educational attainment, geographic location, country of birth, earnings, consumer expenditures, time use, workplace injuries, and employment projections.
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