CHAPTER 8 EFFECTS ON EARNINGS IN 17 SELECTED INDUSTRIES The preceding chapters have traced the impact of the minimumrate increase in five low-wage manufacturing industries (Chapters 2-6) and in establishments with reported adjustment problems (Chapter 7). The present chapter further assesses the effects of the 75-cent rate, this time by comparing the course of hourly earnings before and after January 25, 1950 in industries presumed substantially affected by the minimum-wage increase and in industries presumed only slightly or not at all affected. Lowwage employments generally subject to the Act were selected to represent activities believed to have experienced a substantial direct impact from the 75-cent rate. Low-wage retail and service trades generally not subject to the Act, and high-wage covered industries which in January 1950 were for the most part already paying above 75 cents an hour, were chosen as samples of activities assumed to have felt little or no direct effect. Table 43 lists the 17 industries selected for the comparative analysis, with their average hourly earnings for specified years between 1939 and 1951. The comparative analysis in this chapter is discussed generally in terms of groups of industries rather than in terms of the individual industries making up these groups. This is for emphasis and easier exposition. The earnings figure selected to represent a group of industries is the simple arithmetic mean of the earnings of industries in that group. A simple mean (that is, with each industry weighted equally) was used because, for the purposes of this analysis, the wage behavior of each industry was considered equally significant in depicting the composite wage pattern of its group. An equally weighted mean may have been unrepresentative of a particular group had there been marked divergences in the wage trends of the several industries in that group. But such was not the case, In each group, the simple mean of average An industry was considered low-wage if its average hourly earnings were more than 20 percent below, high-wage if its average hourly earnings were more than 20 percent above, the aver age hourly earnings for total mamfacturing activity (all earnings data as of 1938). Excluded from the comparison, however, were industries for which significant ohanges in definition were made by the U. S.Bureau of Labor Statistios during the period studied, except that corrections were made for changes in definition of the Southern sawmilling industry and it was included. Table 43. Average hourly earnings / in selected industries, United States, specified years 1938-51 Average for year. Excludes premium pay for overtime work except in anthraciteand bituminous-coal mining and in the four low-wage nonsubject industries. b/Simple arithmetic mean, each industry being weighted equally. Estimated BLS series not begun until 1939. Souroes U. S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Monthly Labor Review, industry earnings formed a trend In Chart 14, the 1938-51 trends of average earnings in the high-wage subject, low-wage sub- INDEX NUMBERS 260 Chort II. INDEXES OF AVERAGE HOURLY EARNINGS IN SELECTED HIGH-WAGE SUBJECT INDUSTRIES, 1938=100 INDEX NUMBERS 260 1951 Source: Table 44. Chart 12. INDEXES OF AVERAGE HOURLY EARNINGS IN SELECTED LOW-WAGE SUBJECT INDUSTRIES, 1938=100 Canning and preserving ........ Fertilizer manufacturing 1941 1942 1945 1946 Specified Years 1949 1950 1951 |