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Julius Smith
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Manufacturing Workers Number Nearly 17 Million
in 1998, Census Bureau Reports
The nation's manufacturing sector employed 17 million people in 1998,
according to Internet tabulations released today by the Commerce
Department's Census Bureau. That number was not significantly different
from 1997.
The tabulations, from an Internet report titled 1998 Annual Survey of
Manufactures, Statistics for Industry Groups and Industries, show
employment and payroll, number of production workers and wages, cost of
materials, value added by manufactures, new capital expenditures and other
measures of economic activity for all manufacturing establishments.
The transportation equipment manufacturing subsector was the largest
manufacturing employer in the economy, with 1.9 million workers. Other
major employers include manufacturers of fabricated metal products
(1.8 million), computer and electronic products (1.7 million),
food (1.5 million), and machinery (1.4 million).
The data in the tabulations come from a sample of 58,000 manufacturing
establishments and are subject to sampling variability, as well as
nonsampling error. Sources of nonsampling error include errors of
response, nonreporting and coverage. Measures of sampling variability,
presented as relative standard errors, are shown in the tables.
available free from Adobe.
