March 24, 2000 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)
Overtime contributes to factory recovery
Historically, both
employment and factory overtime have increased as the economy emerged from
recessions. In the most recent recovery, employers appeared to rely about
as heavily on overtime as on hiring or recalling employees.
[Chart data—TXT]
From March 1991 to January 1998, the number of production workers in
manufacturing increased by 601,000. Over the same period, the full-time
equivalent of the aggregate overtime hours growth in manufacturing was
571,000 jobs.
The largest number of such hypothetical full-time equivalent jobs was
found in transportation equipment manufacturing; industrial machinery, and
fabricated metals establishments also accounted for many. Other durable
goods industries with relatively large full-time equivalents included
electronics and primary metals.
These data are a product of the Current
Employment Statistics program. To
find out more, see "Analyzing the recent upward surge in overtime
hours," by Ron L. Hetrick, Monthly Labor Review, February
2000. Full-time equivalents are computed by
taking the total number of overtime hours and dividing it by 40, the
number of hours in a standard workweek.
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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