10 Facts about American Workers
More than 157 millions of Americans are part of the workforce, and many (but not all) of them will spend the whole Labor Day holiday weekend away from their desks, assembly lines, and checkout counters. (10 Facts about American Workers)
As we mark the day, here’s what we know about who American workers are, what they do, and what the U.S., in general, is like.
- Over the past thirty-five years, the share of American workers belonging to labor unions has nearly halved. Union membership peaked at about 35% of all American workers (excluding the self-employed) in 1954, but the unionization rate in 2018 was just 10.5%.
(The share of the workers represented by unions is slightly higher, 11.7%), because the approximately 1.6 million workers who are not union members are in jobs covered by union contracts.)
As per the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the actual number of union members last year was 14.7 million.
In 2012, union membership reached its lowest point since the current data series began in the early 1980s, falling below 14.4 million before a modest upward trend.
The industry with the most significant decline in union representation rates from 2000 to 2018 was transportation and material movement, from 21.7% to 14.5%.
This industry includes a wide variety of businesses – from air traffic controllers to bus drivers to flight attendants.
The unionization rate in some business groups has increased slightly on the following grounds: In legal professions, for example, the unionization rate increased from 5.1% in 2000 to 5.9% the previous year.
In year 2018 Pew Research Center survey, 51% of the Americans said the decline in unionization has been alarming for most working people, while 35% considered it primarily good.
Recently, 45% of the respondents in a July 2019 survey said that labor unions positively impact the way things are going in the country; 28% described their impact as unfavorable.
- Americans generally like the unions and broadly support workers’ right to unionize. According to the year 2018 Center survey mentioned above, the majority (55%) hold a favorable view of unions versus 33% who have an unfavorable view.
In a 2015 survey, a large majority said manufacturing and factory workers (82%), public transport workers (74%), police and firefighters (72%), and public school teachers (71%) had the right to unionize. Nearly six-in-ten (62%) said fast-food workers should be able to unionize, while 35% opposed it.
Union members earned more than non-union members overall in 2018 — $1,051 per week compared to $860 among full-time workers.
The difference in income reflects several factors, including differences in industry and business and the size and sector of the firm.
- Most U.S. workers are employed in the service sector. As of July month, 107.8 million people (71% of all non-farm payroll workers) worked in private service-providing industries, according to the BLS’s most recent employment report.
Among the significant service-industry sectors, the largest were trade, transportation, and utilities (27.8 million workers), followed by education and health services (24.3 million), professional and vocational services (21.5 million), and leisure and hospitality (16.7 million).
Outside the private-sector service industry, about 22.5 million Americans worked in government in July, about two-thirds at the local level. About 12.9 million Americans work in the manufacturing sector.
Self-employed and workers hired by them hold three-in-Ten U.S. Jobs.
- According to BLS data from July this year, about 16 million Americans are self-employed. But the impact of self-employment is broad: A Pew Research Center report found that self-employed Americans and those working for them accounted for 30% of the nation’s workforce or 44 million jobs in 2014.
Only a quarter of self-employed people (3.4 million) had employees, and those who had workers didn’t have many: Among self-employed people, the average was three in 2014, and the standard was 8.6.
BLS estimates derived from a survey of households may underestimate the self-employed. As per the Internal Revenue Service, there were around 25.5 million non-farm sole proprietorships in 2016 (all of which are unincorporated businesses), based on Schedule C filings of profit or loss from the industry.
- Millennials are now in the U.S. The largest generation in the labor force. Roughly a third of Americans (35%, or 56 million) in the labor force are Millennials—ages 23 to 38 in 2019.
In 2016, Millennials outnumbered Generation Xers (ages 39 to 54 in 2019) and became the largest population in the U.S.
They Became single largest generational group in the labor force. Compared to Baby Boomers, Gen Xers’ place as the dominant generation within the labor force was very short-lived – only three years.
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- American women earn around 85 cents on the dollar more than men, but the gap is smaller among younger workers.
In 2018, among workers aged 25 to 34, women earned 89% more than men, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of average hourly wages, which includes full-time and part-time workers.
But the evidence suggests that as women enter inot the responsibilities of parenthood, their earnings lag further behind male counterparts in the same age group.
Several various factors are believed to contribute to perpetuating the gender pay gap, among them the impact of broader family care-giving responsibility, differences in the industries and occupations in which women and men work, workplace gender discrimination, and disparities in workforce experience.
The gender pay gap is smaller among young adults than among workers overall.
The gender gap is one of several gaps in earnings that characterize the American workforce.
For example, a separate Center analysis from 2016 found that white men had higher average hourly earnings ($21) than every other racial or ethnic and gender subgroup: Asian men, who had average hourly earnings of $24.
White men’s earn more than black & Hispanic men and women of all groups.
Young adults’ earnings rise only for college-educated
- The pay gap between young workers with college degrees and their less educated counterparts is the largest in decades.
Despite the pressures of academic life, rising college costs, and burdensome student loans, young college graduates were better than their degree-less peers on many measures of the economic well-being & career attainment, and to the greater extent than in the past.
The center’s most of the recent analysis found that the median salary earned full-time for college graduates ages 25 to 37 was $24,700 higher annually than employed young adults who hold only a high school diploma. The pay gap in previous generations was much smaller.
While unemployment among all the groups has fallen since the depths of the Great Recession to levels seen since the 1960s, it is still true that the higher one’s educational attainment, the more likely they are to have a job. Will be
In July, according to the BLS data, only 2.2% of adults with a bachelor’s degree or higher were unemployed, compared to 3.6% for adults with only a high school diploma and 5.1% for adults who did not graduate high school.
Share of U.S. teens working increases in summer, but less than in previous decades
- A much smaller proportion of American teens work today than they did decades ago. According to a recent analysis of time use data for the BLS by the Pew Research Center, teens spend an average of 26 minutes a day during the school year, compared to 49 minutes a decade ago and 57 minutes in the mid-1990s. Spend on work. ,
Teenagers are also working less during the summer. As recently as two decades ago, nearly half of American teens could expect to work for at least part of their summer vacation.
But the share of teens working in the summer has declined since the early 1990s: the teen summer employment rate began to rise again, after falling to 29.6% in 2010 and 2011, but still in the summer of 2017 was also only 34.6%. (From the late 1940s into the 1980s, the teen summer employment rate generally fluctuated between 46% and 58%.)
The adolescent decline in summer jobs reflects an overall reduction in youth employment in recent decades, a trend that has also been observed in other advanced economies.
As the economy improves, the U.S. I am less ‘neat’ youth
Another way of looking at youth employability, or lack thereof, is to focus on “NEETs” – i.e., children who are neither in employment nor in the education or training.
In year 2018, 14.8% of all Americans ages 16 to 29 — or nearly 9 million youth — had NEET. In 2013, the first year comparable data is available, U.S. There were about 11 million NEETs in the U.S. or 18.5% of the 16-to-29 population.
The center’s 2016 analysis found that U.S. In the United States, the NEET youth population is more female than male (57% to 43%).
Two-thirds of the U.S. High-school education or less in NEET, and black and Hispanic 16- to 29-year-olds were more likely to have NEET than whites and Asians.
- More Americans are working than in the previous decades. In July of this year, 19.7% of U.S. adults aged 65 and older – about 10.5 million people – reported being employed full- or part-time, a steady increase since at least 2000. In July, older workers represented 6.6% of all employed Americans, up from 3% in July 2000.
Americans age 55 and older work at much higher rates than in July 2007, shortly before the Great Recession hit. Employment rates for adults under 55 have improved but have not exceeded pre-recession levels.
Research Center analysis of the year 2018 labor force data found that 29% of boomers aged 65 to 72 were working or looking for work – compared to the silent generation (21%) and the greatest generation (19%). They were leaving labor market linkages behind when they were of the same age.
- Raising the federal minimum wage is so popular overall, but there is a sharp partisan divide. According to a Pew Research Center survey earlier this year, 67% of Americans favor raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $15.
But there is a massive divide between Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, 86% of whom are in favor of the idea, and Republican and Republican leanings, 57% of whom oppose it.
According to the BLS, in 2018, 1.7 million workers — 2.1% of all hourly paid workers — were at or below the current federal minimum wage. Twenty-nine states, the District of Columbia, and several cities and counties have set higher minimums.
But vast disparities in the cost of living across different parts of the country and even across states complicate policy debates.
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