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by changes at its lower end, and a resultant 11-cent advance in average hourly earnings to 80 cents. By March 1950, the proportion of workers receiving less than 75 cents an hour had declined to under one-tenth, most of those leaving the below 75-cents bracket being raised to an hourly average between 75 and 79.9 cents. The short-run impact of the new minimum also affected other hourly wages to some extent, 5 more of every 100 plant workers receiving between 80 and 94.9 cents an hour in March than in ast quarter 1949. The wage structure at and above 95 cents showed little short-run change.

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Direct pay ad justments needed to raise to 75 cents an hour earnings below that amount involved an estimated wage-bill increase of 14 percent. 1/ The actual shortrun increase in average hourly earnings was very nearly that: 16 percent. During the same time, incidentally, average hourly earnings rose only 2 percent for all manufacturing industries as a group. 2/ Between last quarter 1949 and April 1953, however, average earnings for all manufacturing activity rose 25 percent, 3/ an increase equal to that for the surveyed Southern sawmills over the same period (Table 4). The advance in all-manufacturing average earnings thus caught up with that in Southern sawmilling despite the marked upward short-run effect on the latter of the higher minimum; the three-year earnings increase between March 1950 and April 1953 in Southern sawmilling was only 8 percent: 6 cents an hour (Table 4).

This 8-percent advance was accompanied by some widening of the wage structure of the industry, which had been compressed by the short-rur impact of the minimum.

With but few exceptions, this estimated increase was higher than had been previously imposed on any industry or broad industry segment by industryOommittee recommendation or by the statutory hourly minimums of 25 cents in 1938 and 30 cents in 1939. But any test of impact based on estimated per oent wage-bill increases is subject to various qualifying considerations, some of which are discussed in Chapter 1, PP. 7-9.

2/U. S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistios, Monthly Labor Review, Table Cal.

3/Same.

This widening is shown by a disper-
sion to higher wage levels of the
marked concentration of workers
earning below 80 cents an hour, from
74 percent of total plant employees
in March 1950 to 47 percent in
April 1953 (Table 3 and Chart 2).
It is shown too by the data on

Occupational wage movements
(Table 5). 1/

1/The 9 occupations listed in Table 5,
ranged from lowest to highest average
hourly earnings as of last quarter 1949,
were selected from the 29 key positions in
the industry because, besides containing
relatively large mumbers of plant workers,
they accurately mirrored the behavior of
other low, medium, and high-wage jobs.

Table 5. Increases in average hourly earnings of plant workers in Southern sawmills, by selected occupation, a 1949-53

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Employees are sawmill workers exoept where they are specifioally indicated as logging workers. Operations exclusively logging were not surveyed but logging activities integrated with sawmill operations were.

Source: Computed from data of U. S. Department of Labor Statistics. Data for March 1950 from Wage Structure Series 2, No. 76: Lumber in the South, 1949 and 1950, Tables 10 and 11, pp. 15-20. Data for April 1953 from unpublished material.

The low-wage nature of Southern sawmilling is further evidenced by data on occupational earnings. Of the 29 key occupations in the industry, workers in 23 received average earnings below 75 cents an hour in last quarter 1949. The imediate consequences of the new minimum were greater on low-wage than on highwage jobs. Between last quarter 1949 and March 1950, average hourly earnings increased in the three lowest-paid sample occupations by 18-28 percent, in the three middlewage listed positions by 13-14 percent, and in the three highestpaid listed jobs by 6-9 percent. This impact variation served to narrow the range in occupational wage rates,

The pattern between March 1950 and April 1953 appeared reversed, on the basis of somewhat limited data. During this threeyear span, of the five Table 5 positions for which April 1953 wage data are available, the three lowest-wage ones gained in average earnings 6 to 12 percent, the two highest-wage ones 15 to 16 percent. Even so, percent wage gains between last quarter 1949 and April 1953 were generally greater for the lower-paid jobs so that workers in them were relatively better off at the latter date.

As noted in Chapter 1, one general effect worthy of investigation is the indirect influence of labor-standards legislation on employees not subject to such legislation. The sawmill surveys permitted some inspection of this kind of influence. Logging workers 1/ U. S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistios, Wage Structure Series 2, No. 76, Lamber in the South 1949 and 1950, Table 11, pp. 18-20.

in plants with 12 or fewer logging employees are exempt from the wage and hour requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act. This exemption, found in Section 13(a)(15), was provided by the 1949 amendments to the Act.

The field surveys in Southern sawmilling collected wage data for logging workers so exempt, and compared their earnings with those of sawmill workers in the same plants. This information, sırmarized in Table 6, shows that the minimum-wage exemption has been used little if at all in integrated plants with 12 or fewer logging employees. The proportions of workers averaging subminimum wages in these plants were, in March 1950, 9 percent of sawmill workers (possibly engaged in intrastate commerce) and 12 percent of logging personnel, and in April 1953, 1 percent of sawmill workers and 2 percent of loggers. Thus in each survey period the percent of exempt loggers receiving below 75 cents an hour was not much more than that of nonexempt sawmill workers. wage distributions for the two types of workers, especially in the earrings intervals below 80 cents an hour, were also very similar in each survey period; evidently the same rates were paid for jobs of comparable skills, training, experience, and responsibility whether or not employees were legally exempt from the minimum. Perhaps this was because of such considerations as personnel morale and competition for labor.

The

Operations exclusively logging and not Integrated with sawmilling were not sur veyed, so the indirect effects of the 75cent rate on exempt loggers employed in such operations could not be determined.

Table 6.

Pero ent distribution of sawmill and logging workers a/ in integrated Southern sawmills with 12 or fewer logging workers, by average hourly earnings, three payroll periods 1949-53

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In integrated Southern sawmills with 12 or fewer loggers, estimated employment was about 28,000 sawmill and 18,000 logging workers in 1949-50, about 27,000 sawmill and 14,000 logging workers in April 1953.

b/Totals may not add to 100 because of rounding.

Source: U. S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistios.

Data for 1949 and

1950 from Wage structure Series 2, No. 76: Lumber in the South 1949 and 1950, Table 6, p. 11. Data for April 1953 from unpublished material.

B. Regional wage effects

As might be expected, the lower the average hourly earnings in last quarter 1949 and the higher the proportion of plant workers then receiving less than 75 cents an hour in a given region, the greater was the immediate impact of the new minimum. This is shown in Table 7-the lowest-wage Southeast region had the largest, the highest-wage Border States the smallest, short-run increase in average earnings. This caused a significant narrowing of spreads between regional wage levels, from a 15-cent difference between lowest and highest regional average earnings in last quarter 1949 to a 6-cent difference in March 1950.

A slight reversal of pattern between March 1950 and April 1953, with the lowest-wage area having the smallest average-earnings advance, was not enough to erase the

contracting impact of the 75-cent rate on wage differentials among the three regions. In April 1953 as against last quarter 1949, average earnings in the low-wage Southeast were closer to those in the middle-wage Southwest, which in turn were closer to those in the high-wage Border States.

Regional wage distributions are shown in Table 8. These distributions emphasize that the short-run earnings advances were primarily the direct effects of required increases in rates below 75 cents. During October-December 1949, the proportion of plant workers averaging below 75 cents an hour was over three-quarters in the Southeast, almost twothirds in the Southwest, and more than two-fifths in the Border States. Most of these employees moved into the 75-79.9 cents earnings class by March 1950;

Table 7. Increases in average hourly earnings of plant workers in Southern

sawmills, by region, 1949-53

Estimated increase

in avg. hrly, earn
ings required to

Actual increase in avg. hrly, earnings

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Computed from data of U. S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Data for March 1950 from Wage Structure Series 2, No. 76: Lumber in the
South 1949 and 1950, Tables 4 and 5, pp. 9-10. Data for April 1953 from
press release of August 14, 1953.

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Table 8.

Percent distribution of plant workers in Southern sawmills, by average hourly earnings and region, three payroll periods 1949-53

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Source: U. S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. Data for 1949 and 1950 from Wage Structure Series 2, No. 76: Lamber in the South 1949 and 1950, Tables 4 and 5, pp. 9-10. Data for April 1953 from press release of August 14, 1953.

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