July 26, 2000 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)
Executives most likely to have flexible work hours
Flexible work hours
allow workers to vary the times they arrive at and leave their work
places. The proportion of workers with flexible work schedules is highest
for executive jobs and lowest for some manufacturing occupations.
[Chart data—TXT]
In 1997, 42.4 percent of full-time workers in executive,
administrative, and administrative jobs had flexible work schedules.
Workers in sales and in professional specialty occupations had the next
highest incidences of flexible work schedules of the occupations shown in
the chart, at 41.0 and 35.5 percent, respectively.
For some employees, the nature of the work dictates that it begin and
end at set times—for example, police and firefighters and many jobs in
manufacturing. Operators, fabricators, and laborers—a group that
includes assemblers and machine operators in manufacturing—had the
lowest proportion of workers with flexible hours in 1997, at 14.6 percent.
Other occupations with relatively low incidences of flexible hours were
protective service jobs at 16.6 percent and precision production, craft,
and repair occupations at 17.6 percent.
These data are a product of the May 1997 supplement to the Current
Population Survey. Learn more about
flexible work schedules in "Flexible schedules and shift work:
replacing the 9-to-5 workday?" by Thomas M. Beers, Monthly
Labor Review, June 2000.
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.
Read more »