BLS DAILY REPORT, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1997 As the second half of a two-part minimum wage hike took effect Sept. 1, a look at the latest data from BLS shows that 1.5 million workers were making the former minimum wage of $4.75 in the second quarter of 1997 ....Unpublished work tables from BLS show that the vast majority of minimum wage workers were employed in the service-producing sector. Nearly 1.2 million Americans working in the service sector earned $4.75 an hour. Retail trade employed 743,000 minimum wage earners in the second quarter. Eating and drinking establishments had 361,000 employees who were paid the minimum wage in effect in the second quarter. BLS cautioned that the unpublished data, derived from the Current Population Survey, should not be considered part of a BLS news release and that the information is not as accurate or reliable as yearly earning releases, such as BLS' Characteristics of Minimum Wage Workers. Also, the data are not adjusted for seasonal variations. Additionally, BLS economist Steve Haugen said: "All the standard caveats that we normally issue with our annual unpublished package of minimum wage tables apply to these tabulations as well; indeed, data reliability is obviously more of a concern with quarterly data." The number of workers earning below the minimum wage was 2.3 million in the second quarter of 1997 ....(Daily Labor Report, page A-9)_____Labor Day took on special significance this year for an estimated 6.8 million American workers, who get a raise to $5.15 an hour. Another 2 to 3 million, however, will continue to make less than the $5.15 minimum wage because of exemptions and employers who don't obey the law ....After the federal minimum wage increase last September to $4.75, the number of workers earning less than the new minimum fell more than 3 million by the second quarter of this year. Even so, there were still 2.3 million workers making less than $4.75 an hour in the second quarter of this year, according to BLS (USA Today, Sept. 2, page 11B). Growth in the manufacturing sector continues in August, but at a slower pace than in July, reflecting moderation in both production and new orders, the National Association of Purchasing Management says ....The price index rose to 53.8 percent from 53.6 percent, which indicates higher prices for commodities purchased by manufacturers ....The employment index was 1.3 percentage points higher than in July, reaching 52.0 percent, and marking the sixth month in a row that manufacturing employment has grown ....(Daily Labor Report, page A-11)_____An important measure of manufacturing activity grew at a slower rate in August as factories contended with bulging inventories and the strike against UPS ....(New York Times, page D2)_____Manufacturing growth cooled off slightly last month, but factories kept humming at a rapid pace and new signs of price pressures emerged (Wall Street Journal, page A2) How Federal raises will vary by locality is discussed on page A17 of The Washington Post. Federal workers in the Washington-Baltimore area will see a net increase in their paychecks of 2.45 percent, less than the pay hike for federal workers in 29 other metropolitan areas ....President Clinton has authorized 1998 pay raises starting in January. Employees will receive, on average, a 2.3 percent nationwide increase and a 0.5 percent "locality pay" raise. Corporate executives' pay grew faster than corporate revenue and profit over the past 15 years, according to an Internal Revenue Services report. The IRS said executive pay in 1995 was up 182 percent from 1980. In the same period, corporate revenue rose 128 percent, and taxable corporate income rose 127 percent. The executive pay increase could be even higher because the IRS did not count stock options and other deferred compensation plans (Washington Post, page C9). A Congressional Budget Office analysis confirms that the combination of a strong economy and budget and tax legislation enacted last month will eliminate the deficit by 2002 and likely lead to an era of surpluses. Moreover, if all goes well, the federal debt would begin to decline in 2002 for the first time since the early 1970s. However, the CBO's summertime economic and budget outlook is forecasting that, after a robust performance this year, the economy will slow to a more moderate pace and inflation will begin to rise in 1998 -- developments that could seriously impede efforts to eliminate the deficit ....(Washington Post, page A20; Daily Labor Report, page A-10; Wall Street Journal, page A2). Blue-collar jobs climbed to a record 32.8 million earlier this year, reflecting a shift away from the traditionally heavy concentration in manufacturing and toward blue-collar jobs in services and utilities. Yet the rebound in blue-collar jobs has captured little attention, largely because experts have been arguing for a long time that job prospects for minimally educated workers, without a college degree or a proficiency in computers, are so poor. And for more than two decades, the wages of such workers have stagnated -- or worse -- while those of the well educated have generally advanced ....The record 32.4 million blue-collar jobs eclipsed the previous peak reached in late 1979. And although the blue-collar share of jobs has skidded to about 27 percent from just under 40 percent in the last four decades, that share has finally stopped shrinking and is above the low reached in late 1996. Moreover, wages for blue-collar work have also moved up, albeit modestly, in response to the tightening labor conditions. Perhaps more telling, the very nature of blue-collar work is changing, moving away from the manufacturing assembly line to a whole range of other sectors that require workers to use their heads as well as their hands. Indeed, more people with higher education are filling blue-collar jobs ....To complicate the issue, the government no longer includes a monthly occupational employment category labeled "blue collar." But those engaged in precision production, craft and repair, and those labeled as operators, fabricators, and laborers generally fit the definition of blue-collar work ....Randy E. Ilg, an economist at BLS, says that it is true that, if one looks at jobs only by industry, nearly all of the net growth since 1989 has been in services and retail. And when examining jobs by occupation alone, much of the growth is among managers and professionals. But "neither gives a true picture", says Ilg, of what he identifies as "an increase in blue-collar occupations among other industries -- services, construction and transportation-communications-public utility -- instead of in manufacturing" ....Mr. Ilg, who divided the working world into three roughly equal-size groups by earnings, did find that job growth was greatest in the first half of the 1990s for the highest-paid and lowest-paid occupations. But the middle-earnings group, where most blue-collar workers are found, has recovered since the late summer of 1993 almost all the ground it had lost in the preceding four years ....(Robert D. Hershey Jr., New York Times, page D1). Companies that rely on students during the summer are scrambling to fill jobs vacated by the back-to-school rush, says USA Today (Sept. 2, page 1B). The task is tougher, with unemployment at a 24-year low. When the Labor Department releases August's employment data Friday, economists expect the jobless rate to be unchanged from July's 4.8 percent Over a million U.S. professionals -- from economists and writers to Internet Web designers -- call themselves independent contractors who work alone, according to a 1995 Labor Department survey. Hired sporadically by companies that are outsourcing more tasks, many of them are confronting a harsh reality of life in post-downsized America: The proverbial check is perennially in the mail. Slow or downright delinquent payments are giving some one-man bands a bad case of the cash-flow blues ....(Wall Street Journal, page B1).
