There is a wealth of evidence that manufacturing jobs are good jobs. But not all manufacturing jobs are created equal. Published data highlight the considerable variation in pay and productivity across manufacturing industries. For example, workers in the computer and electronic product manufacturing industry earn an average of $34 per hour (as of May 2015), while those in apparel manufacturing...

The number of jobs in the temporary help services industry reached an all-time high of 2.9 million in May 2015, accounting for 2.4 percent of all private sector jobs in the U.S. economy. This short report looks at the latest official U.S. government statistics on the temporary help services industry and its workforce to provide an overview of its role in the labor market and the U.S. economy. The...

The American Community Survey (ACS) is the largest continuous household survey in the United States, providing a wealth of information about the economic, social and demographic characteristics of persons, as well as housing characteristics. One goal of the ACS is to serve as a cost-effective vehicle for collecting information required by law, regulation, or executive order on behalf of Federal...

The temporary help services industry has bounced back from the recession and continues to grow. Newly available data are enabling the Economics and Statistics Administration (ESA) to re-examine this important industry and update a report on the temp industry that we published last year.1 Although we don't know exactly how many temporary workers actually work in the manufacturing sector, we...

Small firms play an increasingly important role in U.S. manufacturing and now account for almost half of America's manufacturing employment. Dense networks of these small manufacturers are vital to the process of taking a product from concept to market, and the exchange of manufacturing know-how across suppliers is essential for the diffusion of the new products and innovative processes that give...

The growing importance of data in the economy is hard to dispute. But what does this mean for workers and jobs? A lot, as it turns out: higher paying (over $40/hour), faster growing jobs. In this report we identify occupations where data analysis and processing are central to the work performed and measure the size of employment and earnings in these occupations, as well as in the industries that...

More than one-quarter of American homes have not adopted internet service, many citing cost as their primary reason. Since market competition can significantly affect consumer prices, we set out to ask: how many Internet service providers (ISPs) are available to consumers at different levels of download speeds?

Large firms depend on suppliers for most of their value-added. Many suppliers are small and their viability is closely tied to their ability to access and manage working capital. The Obama Administration’s SupplierPay initiative was developed to bring companies together to address the working capital challenges facing small firms. This paper explores the potential economic benefits – throughout...