BLS DAILY REPORT, THURSDAY, AUGUST 7, 1997 RELEASED TODAY: Largely as a result of reductions in job-related homicides and electrocutions, the number of fatal work injuries fell in 1996 to 6,112, the lowest level in the five-year history of the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries. The downward trend in the past two years reversed the increases reported in 1993 and 1994 .... Economic activity expands at a moderate pace during June and July in most regions of the country, with scattered wage pressures and little upward push on prices, according to the latest "beige book" economic report from the Federal Reserve. Labor markets continued to tighten in June and July, with some of the Fed's 12 economic regions reporting labor shortages. But these shortages, for the most part, have not translated into an acceleration in wages. Employers in Cleveland, Chicago, St. Louis, and Kansas City districts found it increasingly difficult to find and retain workers for entry-level and retail positions, the report said. Labor markets remained tight, with reports of some companies increasing entry-level wages in the Kansas City district ....(Daily Labor Report, page D-1)_____The U.S. economy grew more briskly last month than during a spring lull, but growth remained moderate while inflation stayed low ....(Washington Post, page E2; New York Times, page D4)_____The economy moved into a higher gear in the early summer after slowing in the second quarter There were few signs of inflation ....(Wall Street Journal, page A4) In the battle between UPS and the Teamsters, the fears of a burgeoning part-time work force are being played out, as well as a high-stakes battle over the future of Teamsters pension funds ....By some estimates, "flexible" workers now make up one-third of the U.S. work force. The group includes employees who welcome part-time status and others who want or need to work full time ....Last year, the average hourly wage of full-time workers was $10.85, compared with $7.54 for part-time workers, according to the Labor Department ....The size of the "flexible" work force is not exactly known. The percentage of part-time workers nationally has remained essentially unchanged in recent years at about 20 percent of the work force, or 30 million people last year, according to the Labor Department. However, this figure understates the true number, economists say, because an employee who uses two part-time jobs to amass more than 35 hours of work a week is counted as a full-time employee. As many as 18 million more workers are temps, independent contractors, contract workers, or contingent workers whose jobs last for limited periods, the Labor Department estimates. This group is steadily increasing, according to a study to be released next month by the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. A national survey conducted for the Labor Department last summer by the Upjohn Institute in Kalamazoo, Mich., found that nearly three-fourths of the 550 companies surveyed use part-time workers regularly; 38 percent use short-term hires; 27 percent use on-call workers; and 44 percent hire independent contract workers ....Less clear is how many workers choose part-time work as a convenience and how many are forced to do so by economic or family conditions ....(Washington Post, page E1). In an editorial, "Behind the Teamsters Strike," the New York Times says that part-time work has not been increasing very much in American business, despite anecdotes to the contrary. Over the past 25 years, the percentage of women workers engaged in part-time work has hovered around 25 percent. Among men, the rate has risen, mostly during soft economic times when companies reduce their full-time staff, but the increase over the past 25 years has been only from about 8 percent to 12 percent. Most important, the vast majority of part-timers -- three-quarters of the women and half the men -- say they do not want full-time jobs .... "Think the Boom Has Left Workers Behind? Think Again" is the title of this week's "Trendlines" by John M. Berry in the Washington Post (page E1). While there is a long-standing dispute among economists over how best to measure changes in workers' inflation-adjusted wages, by almost any standard they have been going up for the past two or three years. One approach, using the rise in average hourly earnings adjusted by the Commerce Department's personal consumption price index, shows an increase of more than 2 percent in the latest 12 months, the strongest gain since the early 1970s ....Some economists argue that the picture is not nearly as bleak as it might seem, particularly if one looks at what is happening now rather than during the 1980s ....
