Established in 1915, Monthly Labor Review is the principal journal of fact, analysis, and research from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, an agency within the U.S. Department of Labor.

Each month, economists, statisticians, and experts from the Bureau join with private sector professionals and State and local government specialists to provide a wealth of research in a wide variety of fields—the labor force, the economy, employment, inflation, productivity, occupational injuries and illnesses, wages, prices, and many more.

The June Review

With Father’s Day 2008 occurring this month and Mother’s Day just a month earlier, perhaps it is timely that this issue of Monthly Labor Review offers two reports related to working parents and decisions they make regarding their use of time.

First, Mary Dorinda Allard and Marianne Janes of the Bureau’s American Time Use Survey program provide an analysis displayed through a series of charts of how working parents allocate the investment of their time in pursuits such as work, childcare, and household and leisure activities.

Among their findings, the authors show that the chances of married mothers working full time rise steadily with the ages of their children, while the age of their children seems to have little relation to whether or not mothers work part time. Married fathers today overwhelmingly still work full time, whether they have one child or four or more children.

Next, Wen-Jui Han, Christopher J. Ruhm, Jane Waldfogel, and Elizabeth Washbrook assess data on the timing of mothers’ employment after childbirth from a new national longitudinal study. While a number of factors seem to influence the speed with which a woman goes to work after having a child, the strongest was whether or not the new mother had been working prior to the birth.

They examine differences in the rapidity of mother’s labor force reentry via demographic comparisons, family structure, years of schooling, and other variables.

Of perennial interest to working moms and dads, as well as most everyone else, is the subject of health insurance and its costs. Christine Eibner and M. Susan Marquis study data from two BLS programs, the Employment Cost Index and the Employee Benefits Survey, over the 1996–2005 period. They examine trends in rates for particular types of businesses in offering health insurance to their employees, the change over time in health insurance costs relative to payroll, and how the generosity of benefits has changed for workers enrolled in health insurance plans.

Download Monthly Labor Review, June 2008

PDF format, 3.5MB, 123Pages.

Volume 131, Number 6 June 2008

Time use of working parents: a visual essay 3
Mary Dorinda Allard and Marianne Janes

The timing of mothers’ employment after childbirth 15
The speed of women’s return to work after the birth of a child was influenced by whether they worked prior to the birth and many other factors
Wen-Jui Han, Christopher J. Ruhm, Jane Waldfogel, and Elizabeth Washbrook

Employers’ health insurance cost burden, 1996–2005 28
Health insurance costs relative to payroll increased 34 percent, with the largest gains in businesses paying low wages; also, benefi t packages became less generous
Christine Eibner and M. Susan Marquis

Departments
Labor month in review 2
Book reviews 45
Current labor statistics 47

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The following departments appear in Monthly Labor Review with varying frequencies:

• Labor month in review summarizes the current issue each month and digests selected publications and news releases from the BLS. Read it for a quick overview of an issue's offerings and an update on what is new in labor statistics.

• The law at work explains legal decisions pertaining to the working world.

• Book reviews analyze the merits of today's hottest books for the Review audience.

• Précis briefly summarizes articles, newsletter items, reports, working papers, etc., from the tremendous amount of information that passes across the MLR editors' desks.

• Letters to the editor give readers an opportunity to hear other readers' opinions.

• At issue is a synopsis of a "hot topic" that will keep you "in-the-know."

• Regional trends present regional tabulations from the Current Population Survey.

• International report features accounts of economic and labor developments in other countries.

• Technical notes explain new statistical methodologies or programs conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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