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Women family heads are more likely to be in the labor force than other women who live as members of a family. Nearly half of the 5 million women classed as family heads in 1955 were in the labor force. Of those between 25 and 65 years of age, 58 percent were working. In more than a fifth of the families headed by women there was no other wage earner.

About 28 percent of the women family heads who were employed were in service occupations (the proportion rises sharply among women over 35). Another 40 percent were equally divided between operative and clerical occupations (among those under 35, however, clerical work ranked first). Among those 65 years of age or over, about 10 percent were in professional occupations and another 10 percent were in farmwork.

Since "other relatives" in family groups include daughters still in school and grandmothers too old to work, it is somewhat surprising to find that more than a third of this group were working. The proportion was slightly higher than for all women 14 years old and over.

Women who do not live as members of a family--the unrelated individuals—are more likely to work than women living in family groups. More than half of them were in the labor force. This group includes many women, such as teachers and nurses, who go where the jobs are in order to utilize their training and skills. Another factor, of course, is that women who are not members of a family must work to support themselves, unless they have independent means.

Working Couples

Working wives constitute the most rapidly growing group of working women, and one that has gained particular attention. They now exceed 10 million in number and make up slightly more than half of the entire woman labor force. The occupations in which working wives are employed are discussed in an earlier section.

Young married women are likely to work for a time to help establish their homes. Furthermore, it is becoming increasingly customary for wives to enter or reenter the labor force after their children are in school or well grown. The proportion of couples with both spouses in the labor force rose from 22 percent (just over 8 million couples) in 1950 to 26 percent (9.8 million couples) in 1955. There were half a million couples in which the wife was the only earner (in over onethird of these couples the husbands were 65 years of age or older) and about the same number in which other family members were the only earners. Nevertheless, in over half of all married couples, the husband was the only earner.

The extent to which wives and other family members (some of whom, of course, are daughters, sisters, mothers) were working in 1955 is shown in the following summary:

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WOMEN'S EARNINGS
AND INCOME

Earnings in Selected Occupations

Women's earnings in certain occupations, such as nursing, stenography, and power laundry work, are considered here. So far as possible, representative occupations have been selected from the broad occupational groups employing large numbers of women.

Factors Influencing Earnings

Among workers receiving salaries or wages, whether men or women, earnings are affected by the skill requirements in widely varying occupations and industries. Moreover, the training, experience, and effectiveness of individual employees in any occupation may differ considerably, and these factors affect earnings. Market conditions, the locality in which the work is done, and sometimes the season of the year may cause variations in pay.

These factors, however, do not account entirely for the fact that the average earnings of women are consistently lower than those of men.

In the first instance, account must be taken of the prevalence of part-time work among women. Of the 27.7 million women who held jobs at some time during 1955, 8 million, or 29 percent, had part-time jobs. Another 42 million women (17 percent of the total) worked half of the year or less.

To some extent the difference in average earnings of men and women is explained by the fact that women workers are concentrated in the lower paying occupations and in the lower pay brackets of these occupations. These tend to be jobs requiring little skill or training. Sometimes, however, these are occupations requiring long years of special training, but offering satisfactions (in terms of service or prestige) so attractive to women that low salaries are not the important consideration.

To the degree that the concentration in the lower pay brackets is a matter of training, it can be overcome as more women obtain technical training or training for the various crafts. There is great demand for skilled workers. To some extent, however, the concentration in lower pay brackets is a matter of length of service on the job. Many women work only a few years, or return to the labor force after an interval of years devoted to household responsibilities. They,

therefore, may lack the job seniority needed to qualify them for advancement.

Finally, even where a woman works side by side with men and has job duties similar to theirs, she is not always paid at the same rate. Efforts are being made to eliminate this unfair differential based on sex (see chs. 4 and 5 on equal pay) through legislation, through collective bargaining between labor unions and employers, and through public education. Nevertheless, lack of equal pay for women is still one of the factors, though probably not the most important one, which keeps women's earnings below those of men.

Sources of Information on Earnings

Information for certain of the occupations that employ the largest numbers of women can be obtained from a variety of sources such as Government agencies and professional associations. There are, however, no general sources of periodic reporting on women's earnings for all types of work.

The discussion which follows describes the recent available data on women's earnings in certain important occupations. Most of the occupations discussed are listed below, with the number of women employed in each in 1950, when the decennial census of occupations was last taken, and the percentage of all workers in the occupation who were women:

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Average rates only can be shown here. Individual earnings naturally may be much higher or much lower than the average. The wage or salary reported usually is either the basic rate of pay or earnings on the job. The actual amount in the worker's pay envelope or checkhis "take-home pay"-is usually considerably less than this, because of the deductions customarily made for various purposes such as taxes, social security, union dues, pension fund, or health insurance. Most

of the deductions are ultimately to the advantage of the worker, but they reduce the amount available for current spending.

"White-Collar" Workers

Professional, clerical, and sales occupations, which taken together employ almost half of all women workers, are often referred to as "white-collar" occupations. Regular reports are made of earnings in some of these occupations as, for example, earnings of office workers and of teachers in elementary and secondary schools. Occasionally the earnings of women in some particular "white-collar" occupation are reported in a special study made by some professional group for its own membership, or by a research organization, a college alumnae association, or a women's organization.

Beginning Salaries of College Graduates

A survey of the job status of 81,000 women graduated from coeducational and women's colleges in June 1955 was made early in 1956 by the Women's Bureau in cooperation with the National Vocational Guidance Association. The following summary shows the number of graduates estimated to be employed in some of the occupations dealt with in this chapter, and the average annual salary at which they started work:

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The average salary reported for employed graduates in these occupations and all other occupations was $3,141. Starting salaries averaged highest for chemists ($3,900 for 470 women) and mathematicians or statisticians ($3,848 for 408 women).

Earnings of Clerical Workers

More than a fourth of all women workers are in clerical occupations, and women are two-thirds of all clerical workers. A major source of data on salaries of these workers is the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which reports on office workers' occupations in various cities throughout the country. Large numbers of women clerical workers are found in the occupations of general stenographer, secretary, accounting clerk, and class B typist. For these, and a few other occupations, the range of average earnings in 15 metropolitan areas is shown in table 1. In noting these general averages it must be kept in mind that many individual women are receiving considerably more, or less, than the average.

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