Report on the American workforce 2001
Published: 2001
Language: eng
Subjects: Labor; Statistics
Description: This is the Department of Labor's fifth Report on the American Workforce. Previous editions appeared in 1994, 1995, 1997, and 1999. Each volume has provided a broad context for analyzing the issues faced by the Department of Labor, as it delivers on its mandate to prepare the American workforce for new and better jobs and to ensure the adequacy and competitiveness of America's workplaces. In this volume, the Report traces the broad outlines of the economy in the 20th century, its impact on the American worker, and the evolution of the statistical tools needed by policymakers, workers, employers, and researchers, as they embark on a new century. The Report's outline and context is presented in the opening message from Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao. An introductory essay outlines the economic, technological, social, and business developments of the just-completed century. The three chapters explore, in turn, demographic change and demographic statistics, the evolution of compensation and compensation reporting, and economic structure and economic classification. A compendium of statistical tables completes the book. The introductory essay outlines the progress of the American worker over the course of the 20th century. This piece also suggests the degree to which our understanding of the workforce, as result of refined statistics, improved substantially during the century. The introduction was written by Donald M. Fisk. Chapter 1 describes the important changes in the composition of the American population and workforce that are the result of immigration and internal migration, particularly the movement of African American workers out of the South. These changes have driven the continuing development of methods for classifying demographic data to track the economic status of a growing variety of groups in the population. The authors of the chapter on minority measurement are N.Clyde Tucker; Geoffrey D. Paulin; Howard N Fullerton, Jr.; Thomas M. Beers III; Terry M. McMenamin; Abraham T. Mosisa; Sharon R. Cohany; and Howard V. Hayghe. The second chapter chronicles the evolution of compensation practices over the course of the 20th century and the continuing efforts to capture these practices in useful statistical data. The components of compensation continue to evolve. Variable pay benefits such as profit sharing and stock options are growing in importance; and other benefits, such as family care and health promotion programs have emerged. The authors of chapter 2 are Thomas Moehrle, Jordan Pfuntner, Richard Schumann, Albert Schwenk, Robert Van Giezen, Michael Horrigan, William Goodman, and Michael Cimini. Chapter 3 describes the structural evolution of the economy and the concomitant development of systems of industrial and occupational classification. Though not often visible, economic classification schemes are critical in determining how well statistics reflect the true workings of the economy.
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