BLS DAILY REPORT, MONDAY, AUGUST 11, 1997 In many ways, UPS is a metaphor for the 1990s economy, says a Washington Post Sunday commentary (page C1) ....What the UPS workers mostly want is the simple right to work full time. Only 40 percent of them, mostly drivers, now do so ....The duration of the current economic expansion, now into its seventh year, is justly celebrated, but the average annual rate of growth is modest compared to many in the past. Similarly, wages for low- and middle-income workers are at least starting to rise. But BLS reports that real weekly earnings for the typical (median) worker remains below its 1989 level (discounted for inflation) .... "The Outlook" feature of The Wall Street Journal (page A1) says the part-time work issue highlighted in the UPS strike is greatly overworked ....The problem comes in how people read the statistics. Most point to data showing that, between 1968 and 1993, part-timers jumped to 17.6 percent of the work force from 14 percent. True enough. But almost all that growth came before 1975. Despite minor ups and downs, there has been no consistent change in part-time employment in the past 15 years ....Whatever hit the economy hit it long ago ....Those who blame part-time work for society's ills, however, think they have spotted another surge in the past three years, says the Journal. BLS numbers do show part-timers rising to 18.9 percent of the work force in 1994, then sliding to 18.3 percent last year ....But the BLS modified its survey in 1994. The surge in part-timers may stem merely from changes in survey design, not changes in the real world. "That's not an economic reality there," warns Thomas Nardone, chief of the labor-force statistics division ....But a few ripples are worth noting. First, most part-timers are "voluntary." Last year, 76.7 percent of those with part-time jobs aid they didn't want full-time work ....To the extent there has been any recent movement in part-timers' share of the labor force, it has been a small rise among those who would rather have full-time jobs -- the "involuntary" part-timers ....But the fluctuations in involuntary part-time work may have more to do with business cycles than with business strategies ....That doesn't mean there aren't issues of concern in the labor market. Just as pay for high-school graduates has declined relative to pay for college graduates in the past 15 years, the wages and, especially, benefits of part-timers haven't kept up with those of full-timers ....And many workers suspect that firms cut costs by hiring full-time temps and contractors, with lower pay and benefits. A 1995 BLS survey showed that about 4.9 percent of the work force, about 6 million "contingent" workers, believed their jobs wouldn't last. Temp agencies have grown tremendously in the past 20 years, but BLS doesn't know whether the share of contingent workers as a whole has increased or decreased .... The Wall Street Journal's feature "Tracking the Economy" (page A4) forecasts that nonfarm productivity data for the second quarter, to be released Tuesday, is expected to be up 0.8 percent, compared with a 2.6-percent increase in the previous quarter. Producer prices for July, due out Wednesday, are expected to rise 0.1 percent, after declining by 0.1 percent in June. The Consumer Price Index for July, due out Thursday, is expected to rise 0.2 percent, after rising 0.1 percent in June. The average selling price of a new passenger vehicle was a record $21,750 last year, up 6 percent from 1995, when the average price first broke the $20,000 barrier at $20,450 (Washington Post, Aug. 9, page F1). American drivers are consuming record quantities of gasoline so far this year, with about half refined from imported oil. Indeed, the nation's dependence on imported oil is also setting records as domestic production of oil slowly declines. The prospect, oil industry experts say, is for all these trends to continue robustly, at least as long as the economy remains strong. But the heavy demand means that any sharp increase in gasoline prices would have an even bigger effect upon the American economy. The soaring gasoline consumption is driven by more than just the strong economy, though. A long period of relatively low oil and gasoline prices has led to a change in the types of vehicles on the roads: The cars and trucks reaching the junkyards this year have higher gasoline mileage, on average, than the new ones rolling off dealers' lots, for the first time on record. As a result, the introduction of new cars and trucks, which had previously helped conserve gasoline because of the vehicles' fuel efficiency, is now adding to the demand. Because of that shift, and because an increase in the car population is swelling the total miles driven by 2 percent to 3 percent every year, gasoline consumption in June was the highest ever for that month ....(New York Times, page A1). DUE OUT TOMORROW: Productivity and Costs -- Second Quarter 1997
