October 22, 1999 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)
Pay gains similar for workers in private industry and State and local government over past two decades
Pay increases in private industry and in State
and local government were similar on average between 1981 and 1998.
[Chart data—TXT]
The wages and salaries of private industry workers rose by 3.9 percent
per year from 1981 to 1998. For State and local government workers, the
average rate of increase was 4.5 percent. The trends were even closer if
the comparison involves only the service industry. Pay changes in the
private service industry and in the State and local government service
industry were virtually identical in the 1981-98 period: 4.7 percent per
year for private and 4.6 percent for State and local government.
Looking at recent years, wages and salaries in private industry
increased by 3.2 percent per year in the 1990s compared to 2.9 percent in
State and local government. The corresponding service-industry trends were
the same or about the same: 3.3 percent per year in the private sector and
2.9 percent in State and local government.
Note that differences in the rates of wage change between all private
industry workers and all State and local government workers are to be
expected, because the industry and occupational composition of their work
forces differ. For example, service industry workers make up nearly
two-thirds of State and local government workers but only about a third of
private industry workers.
These data on earnings are a product of the BLS Employment
Cost Trends program. More information is in "Compensation Cost
Trends in Private Industry and State and Local Governments" (PDF
67K), by
Albert E. Schwenk, Compensation and Working Conditions, Fall 1999.
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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