BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS WORKING FUNDS, TRUSTEE FUNDS, REIMBURSEMENTS, Estimated reimbursable projects to be undertaken by the Bureau of International Monetary Fund: Machine tabulation of inter- Federal Security Agency, Office of Education: Reimbursement for City of San Francisco and surrounding municipalities: For costs Bureau of the Census: Mechanical tabulations of construction statistics Economic Cooperation Administration: Collecting prices from selected import houses in New York City on imports from countries participating in the European recovery programs-Office of the Housing Expediter: Vacancy and rent surveys in 5 cities Atomic Energy Commission: Machine tabulation processing of the inventory of manpower engaged in atomic energy operations__ Airmail postage used in mailing requested statistical material__ Special computations and tabulations of data requested by various private individuals and organizations___ Photostatic copies of nonconfidential union agreements for various labor and employee organizations and individuals.. Total reimbursements.. Grand total__. $5, 400 1,628 1, 325 4, 700 1,150 750 10,000 5,000 50 700 400 29, 953 2, 117, 353 Mr. FOGARTY. Will you also put in the record the number of employees on each project? Mr. CLAQUE. Well, I can show you man-positions. Some of these we do not have a specific employee on a particular project. Some of these small ones are taken into the operation of the unit itself that does it. Mr. FOGARTY. Is all this work being done by the 1,120 employees? Mr. FITZGERALD. Two hundred and five additional. Mr. FOGARTY. Doing work of this type requested the various agencies. You are the statistical agency of the Government and when any agency wants these various services they make the request to the Bureau of Labor Statistics? Mr. CLAQUE. That is right. Mr. FOGARTY. And you do not have any jurisdiction on the appropriations of any kind. You are reimbursed from them? Mr. CLAGUE. Yes; they buy this service from us if they wish it. This is service of a kind related to our regular work. We do not go out and take any kind of service just in order to have more work. This is work tied up with what we are already doing, work for which we have the staff and the knowledge. Sometimes it is done for private industry also; for example, the index used by the Treasury for department stores for tax purposes is provided by us to the depart ment stores and businesses who use that kind of inventory control. I do not recall the amount of that reimbursement. It is about $20,000 a year. WORK WITH OR FOR CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEES Mr. FOGARTY. Have you any estimate of the number of man-hours required for appearances before congressional committees? Mr. CLAGUE. I never thought of totaling that up. Mr. FOGARTY. You make that a point every year-that you have appeared before so many congressional committees and they do take up quite a bit of your time. Mr. CLAGUE. Yes; for example, the Joint Committee on the Economic Report. We have not only appeared before them, but their staff regularly calls on us for information. I have here a Handbook of Regional Statistics gotten out by the Joint Committee on the Economic Report last year. The Bureau's staff did the work on this. Mr. FOGARTY. For the record, will you get an estimate of the manhours? Mr. CLAGUE. I will be glad to make an estimate of that. (The information requested is as follows:) The estimate of man-hours requested is 5,184. This includes time actually spent in testimony, before congressional committees and in preparing materials for testimony or for the use of congressional committees. Mr. FOGARTY. You do not get reimbursement for any of that? POSITIONS FOR 1951-SALARIES AND EXPENSES Mr. FOGARTY. You have 1,120 positions authorized for 1951. How many actual positions do you have filled at the present time? Mr. FITZGERALD. One thousand, one hundred. EMPLOYMENT, PAYROLLS, HOURS OF WORK, AND SO FORTH Mr. FOGARTY. How many employees are in activity A? Mr. FITZGERALD. Two hundred and eighty. Those are positions. Mr. FOGARTY. What are they doing, Mr. Clague? Mr. CLAGUE. They produce a series of employment, payrolls, hours of work, average hourly earnings, and average weekly earnings for the United States as a whole, by industry. They also cover State statistics of this same kind, and local statistics in about 100 local areas. Here is the report for November 1950 as an illustration. This shows the breakdown of employment last month, this month, and a year ago, and continuing into the past as far as one wants to go. It shows the employment by industry. For example, in the primary metal industries, it is broken down into blast furnaces, iron and steel foundries, nonferrous metals, and so forth. We have a detailed breakdown of employment for months running into the past. In addition, we have the hours and the earnings of employees. All this comes from one schedule. We have average weekly earnings in manufacturing industries as far back as 1939. As an illustration, we have the earnings in blast furnaces and steel works and other companies. Our report shows that in electrical machinery, the average weekly earnings were $63.92 for the workers in that industry; for motor generator employees, $68.50. Mr. FOGARTY. Do you cooperate with the various States in this program? Mr. CLAGUE. Yes; and here I have a chart of the coverage. Every State is participating in some degree in the publication of these data within the State. We have in this list employment, i. e., total employment and production worker employment, the latter meaning without the overhead and sales force. For these same workers, we get the total payroll for the week ending nearest the middle of the month. From that we compute average weekly earnings, average earnings per hour including overtime, and average earnings per hour on a straight-time basis. Finally, we have a number of other things like labor turn-over. We tie in with the States as shown by this map. Finally, we have a little spot map which shows how many cities of the country we cover. Let me give you an illustration of the use of these statistics. Mr. Chairman, this chart shows how they can be used for immediate purposes. This shows a breakdown of the hours of work in selected industries. The National Production Authority is concerned with the question: Would it be better to bring more people into industry, more women and youngsters, or more older people, to enlarge the work force? Or, would the most economical work force be obtained by lengthening the hours of work? The choice depends in part on what the pattern of working hours already is. Note the pattern of hours in these three industries, which indicates the way in which Mr. FOGARTY. Whom are these charts used by? Mr. CLAGUE. The NPA. Let us take copper as an illustration. The overwhelming proportion of workers in October were already up to at least 48 hours a week in the copper industry. Some are working 54 to 56 hours. The question is whether they could work that labor force any longer hours. If that is not feasible, they will have to get more copper miners. In the case of blast furnace and steel workers you will notice the prevailing pattern is 48 hours. Mr. FOGARTY. You do not expect any decrease? Mr. CLAGUE. In steel I would not expect any further increase and I doubt if there will be any decrease. The hydraulic-turbine industry has a contract with the Government. They use in their contract a clause that provides that the payments they receive for turbines purchased by the Government are based on the average hourly earnings of the workers in this industry. The contract provides that the labor cost shall be calculated on the hourly wages paid by the manufacturers in this industry. Here also I have a sample contract from the Maritime Commission which builds ships. They draw on the Bureau of Labor Statistics for two series in figuring the price they will pay for the completed ship: One is the straight-time hourly earnings of the Bureau of Labor Statistics; the second is the wholesale price index of the Bureau for materials that go into shipbuilding. Mr. FOGARTY. Is there any other division in the Department of Labor that gives a similar service to the industry and other agencies? Mr. CLAGUE. No; we have the responsibility within the Department of Labor to collect these general statistics and basic data. The Bureau of Employment Security obtains information from employers on a local basis for the purpose of the operation of their employment offices. Mr. FOGARTY. Do you do any work in connection with the BaconDavis Act? Mr. CLAGUE. Yes. Mr. FOGARTY. Do you have an appropriation in here? Mr. CLAGUE. That is done by us as a service for the Solicitor's Office. PRICES AND COST-OF-LIVING WORK Mr. FOGARTY. Activity B, "Prices and the cost of living." You show a decrease of $53,900 and a decrease of 13 positions. That may be elimination of nonrecurring items, the wholesale price index schedule for 1951. What do you mean by elimination of nonrecurring items? Mr. CLAGUE. In the book of charts which I showed you, you will have noticed the second item which was wholesale prices; i. e., the prices of commodities in the primary markets-the price of automobiles, of steel, and various types of manufactured goods. This is the series that goes back to 1890. These data are primarily of concern to businessmen and are used by them in their business operations. This index measures the level of prices in markets prior to retailing. This index is being revised during the last several years and is being brought up to date. A series of committees from the different business organizations have consulted with us on ways to improve the information in the index. For example, we had a committee from the agricultural implement industry. They advise us and arrange to have one of their group report to us once a month on the price of some standard agricultural implement manufactured in the industry. This revision has been going on for 3 years. That work is due to be completed this fiscal year and the money used for that is being withdrawn. After that we will have the new index, which will be continued on our regular appropriation. OCCUPATIONAL WAGE RATES AND TRENDS Mr. FOGARTY. Activity C, "Occupational wage rate and trends." You show an increase of $258,000 and 23 positions. You are already spending $750,650 on this activity. Mr. CLAGUE. This, Mr. Chairman, is one of the three major programs of the Bureau-wage statistics. This is the first time in a number of years that a proposal for an increase in this program has been presented to this committee. Wages rank with prices and are one of the most important of the Bureau's responsibilities. This wage work has been going on for many, many years. It is a system for collecting data on the wages of individual employees and occupations to find out what the rates of pay are in each industry. This proposal is in line with the Hoover Commission report. I would like to read from the Task Force Report on Statistical Agencies which talked about duplication of Federal activities and recommended that certain functions be assigned to certain agencies. This occurs at page 14: The Bureau of Labor Statistics will have general responsibility for research and analysis relating to wholesale prices and living costs, employment and unemployment, working hours, wages and payrolls, productivity, and allied subjects primarily involving the activities of wage earners and salaried groups, and for the collection in these fields of specialized statistics not suitable for assignment to the Bureau of the Census. It should be charged with the conduct of "prevailing wage" inquiries on behalf of all other agencies of the Government, including the military. This task-force recommendation was repeated in the Hoover Commission report to the Congress. Mr. FOGARTY. The Hoover Commission report advocated what this task force recommended. Mr. CLAGUE. And the Bureau of the Budget has approved our proposal for an increase this year because it is in line with the general proposal. INCREASE FOR LOCAL WAGE SURVEYS Mr. FOGARTY. Why do you need that increase? Mr. CLAGUE. The proposal for the increase in work this year relates to wage work in local communities; that is, to get a local wage survey for a given locality. Heretofore we have collected and we still collect wages by industries. For example, we made a survey of wages in the automobile industry which is a comprehensive survey of representative occupations in that industry in different sections of the countrywherever automobiles are made. We also do local studies, such as our office workers' surveys covering wages and salaries of stenographers, clerks, and so forth. Mr. FOGARTY. Is that done on request? Mr. CLAGUE. Yes. It is usually on request from employers or unions but sometimes on our own judgment of the general need of the country for a wage program. For example, the Western Association of Meat Packers, who are small packers, wanted a study of the wages in the meat-packing industry some years ago and requested us to do it. Mr. FOGARTY. Did they contribute to the cost? Mr. CLAGUE. No; they did not. These are small-business men usually, and if they cannot get us to do these surveys they probably will not get them at all. The larger businessmen and manufacturers usually have their own data. In the automobile industry the employers have wage information of their own, but in the smaller businesses they are unable to do this. There is a lot of local bargaining in which small local unions deal with small employers, or where employers make their own wage determinations for their employees. In these cases such unions and employers do not have access to information as the larger firms do. That is why we get the demand for local studies. It was because of this demand that we took up this matter of wages of representative occupations in a local area. We made our first experiment in Trenton, N.J. The survey was supported by the local chamber of commerce, which called a meeting of manufacturers in that city, of whom about 100 attended. What they got out of the survey was a list of key |