U.S. poultry processing employment and hourly earnings

Journal of Applied Poultry Research

Volumn 6, Issue 1, 1997, Pages 81-89

  Schrimper, R A ^a  

^a NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Data discrepancies; Hourly earnings; Poultry processing employment; Price deflators

Indexed keywords

EID: 0031476038     PISSN: 10566171     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/japr/6.1.81     Document Type: Article

References (9)

1. The SIC codes consist of a hierarchical set of categories that can be combined into various levels of aggregation. An inverse relationship exists, however, between the amount of published information and the level of SIC aggregation. Selecting a more detailed SIC code, consistent with a more homogenous set of poultry processing activities, comes at the cost of decreased amounts of publicly available information, in part because of confidentiality concerns.
2. Brown, D.M., 1993. Changes in the red meat and poultry industries. Agricultural Economics Report No. 665, Economic Research Service, USDA, Washington, DC.
3. Hetrick, R.L., 1994. Why did employment expand in poultry processing plants? Monthly Labor Review 17(6):31-34.
4. Lambert, D.F., 1994. Technological changes in meat and poultry packing and processing. J. Agric. and Appl. Econ. 26(2):591-604.
5. Langlois, C., 1993. A markup over average cost pricing rule for meat and poultry in the United States. Agric. Econ. 8(3):227-242.
6. Intermittent workers are counted as employees if they perform any service during the pay period. Tabulations of employment exclude proprietors, self-employed individuals, unpaid volunteers, family workers, farm workers, and domestic workers. Officers of corporations are counted as employees.
7. Functions of administrative offices include: program planning, company purchasing, financial policy and accounting, general engineering, company personnel, and legal and patent matters.
8. This change, however, had little effect as far as manufacturing firms were concerned (1974 County Business Patterns, Vol. 1-5, p. vii).
9. CBP data does not include the same kind of information about type of workers or hours worked as the other two data sources. The BLS and CM/ASM use slightly different definitions of hours of work. According to the BLS, hours of work includes all hours for which pay is received in a given period, including vacation time, holidays, and sick leave. In the CM/ASM tabulations, hours of work refers only to the time spent at the place of employment and excludes the time for which workers are paid, but not at the plant. The two sources give more similar definitions of total payroll for production workers than for hours of work. Total payroll includes essentially all compensation (including the cash equivalent of all in-kind payments to workers) prior to any deductions for taxes, social security, union dues, savings plans, etc. Payroll and hours of work information in each source can be used to estimate earnings per hour for production workers in particular industries.