BLS Celebrates Festivus!

Thursday, December 14, 2023

December is full of holidays, celebrations, concerts, parties, and more. This year, BLS is celebrating A Festivus for the Rest of Us. You might wonder how BLS is connected to Festivus. Glad you asked.

The Festivus Pole

Our Festivus tradition starts with the Festivus Pole, an aluminum pole with a very high strength-to-weight ratio. No decorations, please. Tinsel is distracting. If you are shopping for your Festivus Pole this year, you might check out trends in hardware prices from the Consumer Price Index.

Interestingly, consumer prices for tools, hardware, and supplies were relatively flat for long periods, showing practically no change from 2013 through 2020. In fact, the index value in mid-2020 stood close to 100, the same as the base period value from December 1997. But the past few years have seen rapid price rises; perhaps Festivus Poles were caught up in supply chain disruptions. Compared with mid-2020, hardware prices were up about 10 percent by early 2022 and over 20 percent by the end of 2022. Since then, consumer prices for hardware have been pretty stable.

Editor’s note: Data for this chart are available in the table below.

Festivus dinner

Another important part of the tradition is the Festivus dinner. According to our Consumer Expenditure Surveys, the average U.S. household (what we call a consumer unit) spent $9,343 on food in 2022. That included $5,703 on food at home and $3,639 for food away from home. Spending for food away from home in 2022 exceeded 2019 levels, the first time that has happened since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Airing of grievances

As our Festivus dinner is served, it’s time for the airing of grievances. This is the opportunity to tell everyone gathered how they have disappointed us over the past year. We don’t air grievances at BLS, and we are never disappointed. But we do air our dirty laundry, by letting data users know the limitations they should consider when using BLS data. One important source for airing our grievances is the BLS Handbook of Methods, which explains in detail how we develop BLS statistics and what stakeholders should consider when using the data.

Many mental health professionals believe the airing of grievances, when done properly, can relieve pent-up emotional distress and improve health. The BLS National Compensation Survey looks at a variety of employee benefits, including employer-sponsored medical insurance. Such plans include coverage for mental health care. In 2023, 72 percent of private sector workers had access to medical care benefits through their employer. You can drill down into details from the survey, including variations by industry, occupation, wage level, and geography. Here’s an example of how access to employer-provided medical insurance varies by wage level.

Editor’s note: Data for this chart are available in the table below.

Feats of strength

There’s no touch football game at our Festivus celebration. Rather, it’s time for the feats of strength. To see how often Americans participate in such activities, let’s check out the American Time Use Survey. Looking at information from 2022, on any given day about 20 percent of Americans participated in sports, exercise, and recreation, and spent about an hour and a half per day in such activities. The following charts shows how that time varied by age group.

Editor’s note: Data for this chart are available in the table below.

We can also explore the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program to learn more about occupations that might be good Feats of Strength competitors. In 2022, there were just over 218,000 coaches and scouts nationwide. As seen in the following map, the largest number of coaches and scouts were in states with the largest populations: California, New York, Ohio, Florida, and Texas.

Editor’s note: Data for this map are available in the table below.

We can normalize these data to account for differences in the size of each state. The map below shows the location quotient for coaches and scouts in each state (plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico). Location quotients are the ratio of an occupation’s share of state employment to that occupation’s share of national employment. For example, an occupation that makes up 10 percent of state employment compared with 2 percent of U.S. employment would have a location quotient of 5 for that state. In this case, Montana has an edge in our Feats of Strength competition.

Editor’s note: Data for this map are available in the table below.

Festivus miracle

BLS will not produce a Festivus miracle. Our work to produce new economic data in nearly 200 national news releases and over 700 local news releases each year is not a miracle. It is the result of hard work by over 2,000 BLS employees and our partners in the states, territories, other statistical agencies, and beyond. We say thank you to all of them. And in this season of thanks and celebration, we offer special thanks to those businesses and households that provide information to support our statistics. You are the true Festivus miracle. We couldn’t do what we do without you. Thanks, and Happy Festivus.