The definition specifically excludes the manufacture of watch cases, and the assaying, refining, and smelting of base or precious metals, and the manufacture of compacts and vanity cases to be used for distribution or advertisement of a cosmetic product. The term "parts" is limited to materials employed exclusively for jewelry manufacture, and does not include such articles as springs, blades, and nail files, which are used largely in the manufacture of products not covered by the definition. In determining the scope of the survey, the Bureau followed the general outlines of the above definition. However, the actual coverage necessarily extends somewhat beyond these limits in certain cases. Thus, a considerable proportion of the cigarette lighters and cigar and cigarette cases produced in plants covered by the report were not made of precious metals nor embellished with stones. The data obtained from such plants relate to all of the wage earners employed, because it was impossible to separate those who worked on the types of lighters and cases specified in the definition from those who worked on other types. On the other hand, the survey did not cover lapidary work,2 except when carried on in jewelry factories. A preliminary investigation of the specialized lapidary industry revealed that this group of small establishments employs highly paid, skilled workers who work irregularly on a piece-rate basis.3 For the most part, the lapidary firms do not keep time records of a type which would yield the information needed for analysis of hourly earnings. The study was based on a representative sample, including approximately one-third of the employees in the industry. Data covering wages and hours were obtained for all classes of employees in each plant, with the exception of the supervisory and management officials. Data on extra earnings for overtime work and on earnings of office clerical employees were also obtained, but are not included in the tables in this article. 5 4 The products of the industry are usually classified, on the basis of the type of raw materials used, into two groups, namely, precious jewelry and medium- and low-priced jewelry. The precious-jewelry group embraces products made of platinum or gold of 10-karat fineness or better, and articles containing precious stones such as diamonds, pearls, etc. Medium- and low-priced jewelry includes products made of silver, base metals, plastics, wood, leather, and Lapidary work consists of the cutting, polishing, and setting of diamonds and other precious and semiprecious stones. According to the United States Census of Manufactures, the lapidary industry in 1937 consisted of 51 establishments with 217 wage earners. ⚫ For the industry as a whole, the inclusion of extra overtime earnings would have increased the hourly average by less than 1 cent. Hourly earnings for office workers as a whole averaged 51.2 cents, ranging from less than 30 cents to more than $1 an hour. In terms of 5-cent wage intervals, the largest concentration occurred in the class of 42.5 and under 47.5 cents an hour. 16.2 percent of the workers having average earnings within these limits; 32.9 percent averaged less than 42.5 cents, 50.9 percent received 47.5 cents and over, and only 7 percent received as much as 77.5 cents or more. other materials, including gold of less than 10-karat fineness. These latter articles may be decorated with semiprecious, synthetic, or imitation stones. Although the establishments in the industry generally tend to specialize in either precious or medium- and low-priced products, a considerable group of plants made articles in both of these categories. As none of the plants scheduled maintained separate pay-roll records for the two types of products, it has been necessary in analyzing the wage data to create a third classification embracing plants making both precious and medium- and low-priced jewelry. The distribution of the sample in terms of product and geographical location is shown in tables 1 and 2. TABLE 1.—Coverage of Survey in the Jewelry Industry, by Type of Product, 1940 TABLE 2.-Coverage of Survey in the Jewelry Industry, by Region and State, 1940 Includes 2 plants in Connecticut (outside of New York metropolitan region). Includes 1 plant in Kentucky, 2 plants in Maryland, 2 plants in Minnesota, 2 plants in Missouri, and 1 plant in Wisconsin. An attempt to classify these establishments in one or the other of the above groups on the basis of chief products proved to be impracticable because of the lack of adequate information as to the relative output of the two classes of products. Average Hourly Earnings Hourly earnings of the 9,628 factory wage earners covered in the survey averaged 58 cents in February 1940. (See table 3.) The spread of earnings, shown in table 4, covers a very wide range, extending from under 30 cents to over $1.625 an hour. TABLE 3.-Average Hourly Earnings of Jewelry Workers, by Region, Type of Product, Sex, and Skill, 1940 $0. 580 $0.702 $0. 380 $0.836 $0, 861 $0. 499 $0. 462 $0. 551 $0. 382 $0. 368 $0. 399 $0.349 Precious and medium- and low-priced jewelry 382 . . 442 799 (1) 401 438 379 Number of workers insufficient to warrant computation of an average. Regions other than New 621 705 .451 York metropolitan and Total Average hourly earnings Total TABLE 4.-Percentage Distribution of Jewelry Workers, by Average Hourly Earnings, Sex, and Skill, 1940 Total.... Number of workers.. 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 9, 628 5, 913 3,715 3, 465 3, 227 238 4. 502 2,088 2,414 1, 661 598 1, 053 1 Less than a tenth of 1 percent. The wide dispersion of earnings and absence of any pronounced central tendency in the data lead to the conclusion that other factors. besides differences in sex and skill are needed to account for the wage structure of the jewelry industry. Evidence as to the effect of one of these factors, namely, type of product, is furnished by a comparison of the plant averages. Although the distribution of plant averages varies considerably among the three wage areas, this difference is due chiefly to variations in the geographical distribution of the precious-jewelry plants and those making medium- and low-priced products. For example, nearly three-fifths of the plants in the New York metropolitan region averaged 65 cents an hour or more and over one-fifth showed averages of 95 cents or more, whereas only slightly more than one-tenth of the New England establishments averaged 65 cents and over, and none had wage levels exceeding 95 cents. This contrast is related to the fact that the precious-jewelry establishments, which predominate in the New York City area, show the highest wage levels, whereas the plants making medium- and low-priced products, which are concentrated in the lower earnings intervals, make up most of the coverage in the New England region. The distribution of plant averages for Total Male Female those establishments in the New York area which make mediumand low-priced jewelry compares rather closely with that for the same class of plants in the New England region A similar relationship is also evident in the plant data for the area outside of the New England and New York metropolitan regions It appears, therefore, that although there are substantial differences between average hourly earnings in plants making different types of products, the regional variations for the industry considered as a whole are not especially significant by themselves. The variations in hourly earnings by type of product, as shown by the plant average data, are also evident in the distributions of individual employees' earnings. (See table 5.) TABLE 5.-Percentage Distribution of Jewelry Workers, by Average Hourly Earnings and Type of Product, 1940 As pointed out before, both the precious and the medium- and lowpriced jewelry classifications embrace a wide variety of products. Sufficient data are available to permit separate analyses of average hourly earnings of employees working on some of these items. In the precious-jewelry group, only the ring-manufacturing plants were sufficiently numerous among those scheduled to yield worth while figures for separate analysis. The averages by product are shown in table 1. |