About one out of every four workers in the United States is a "white collar" worker. Because of their numerical importance in the labor force and the existence of widespread interest in their economic status, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has recently made a number of surveys of the salaries and working conditions of these workers. A major segment of this program was begun last year, when surveys of office workers were made in 10 of the country's largest cities.1 This year similar surveys have been made in 17 cities, including 6 in which studies were conducted last year. These six cities are designated below by an asterisk. Reports on the cities surveyed this year will appear in a four-part bulletin, as follows:

are paid. Hourly rates were obtained by dividing these weekly salaries by scheduled hours. The number of workers presented refers to the estimated total employment in all establishments within the scope of the study and not to the number actually surveyed. (The industries and the minimum size of establishment within the scope of the study are listed in appendix A, p. 28.)

Data are shown only for full-time workers, defined as those who are hired to work the establishment's full-time schedule for the occupational classification.

Salary and hours information is presented only for a limited number of jobs; no attempt was made to study all office occupations; and, in general, the jobs surveyed are those that are found in a large proportion of offices and that involve duties which are more or less uniform from firm to firm. They are more representative of the salaries of women than of men office workers.

There has been some revision in industrial coverage since last year's studies. The major change consists of broadened coverage in retail trade, which now includes all types of retail establishments rather than only department and clothing stores. In addition all types of central offices rather than only those attached to industries specifically included within the scope of the survey were covered this year; the wholesale industry group was broadened to include petroleum bulk stations; and nonprofit membership organizations were added to the scope of the service industries.

To round out the picture of the salaries for office workers, information is presented in Parts I, III, and IV on supplementary benefits, such as vacations, holidays, and sick leave. In view of the fact that information on supplemental wage benefits was obtained in last year's studies, no attempt was made to obtain more recent information on these wage practices in the cities discussed here.

Salaries

Average weekly salaries of Atlanta women office workers in January 1949 varied from $32 for office girls and $32.50 for clerks engaged in routine filing to $50 for hand bookkeepers. With the exception of stenographers and workers performing the functions of a bookkeeper by machine (class A bookkeeping-machine operators), who received between $43 and $45, the averages for women in all other occupations studied fell between $34 and $42.50. Earnings of individual women office workers in the jobs studied ranged from $20 to about $85, but there was a considerable concentration of salaries within a narrow range in each job. In over one-third of the jobs, at least half of the women received between $35 and $42.50 a week, and over half the women machine bookkeepers (class A bookkeeping-machine operators) earned between $40 and $45 weekly. Nearly three-fifths of the general stenographers, numerically the largest group studied, were receiving salaries between $37.50 and $47.50.

Among the nine occupations studied in which information could be shown for men, weekly salaries varied from $30.50 for routine file clerks to $58 for hand bookkeepers. Accounting clerks, the largest group studied, averaged $51.50 a week and general clerks, another large group, averaged $47.50.

Although salaries for clerical workers are generally expressed in monthly or weekly terms, the

Bureau converted the salaries to hourly rates to allow for differences in the length of the workweek. On an hourly basis, occupational averages of women varied from 81 cents to $1.27. In half of the jobs, average hourly earnings of women amounted to more than a dollar and in most of the remainder, between 90 cents and a dollar. Earnings in the jobs studied for men ranged from 79 cents to $1.44 an hour.

Salaries were found to be generally higher in Atlanta offices in January 1949 than in December 1947, although the average increase varied from job to job. The salaries of women clerk-typists and general stenographers increased by about $4 a week. For a substantial number of the other jobs surveyed, average weekly increases over the year were about $2.

Work Schedules

The 40-hour week was the most common schedule in Atlanta offices; three out of five women were scheduled to work this number of hours weekly. Most of the remainder were working shorter hours; 6 percent worked over 40 hours and less than a half of 1 percent were on work schedules of more than 48 hours. Women in the finance, insurance, and real estate; and in the transportation, communication, and other public utilities groups, generally worked the shortest hours of any groups studied.