Looking for a Job, Finding the Right Employee

NA

A Look at the Employment in the United States Swine Production Industry

NA

Employee Rosters Rise; Wages Continue to Climb

NA

Work Environment, Job Satisfaction, Top Employees Work Interests

NA

A Look at the Employment in the United States Swine Production Industry

A survey of pig producers and employees was conducted to document trends in the industry. These surveys have been conducted four times: 1990, 1995, 2000, and 2005. Trends show that the average age of pig producers is increasing, quite notably the last five years; 2000 to 2005. It increased by 4.1 years over the past five years. Producers are staying in the industry longer and fewer are entering; especially younger producers. Employee trends show the same thing—that the average age is increasing; it increased by 6.6 years from 2000 to 2005. Employees too are staying in the industry longer reflecting less turnover. Education levels of producers and employees are increasing. This is most notable with employees. About one in ten employees (9%) indicated they have a DVM or Ph.D. The percent with a masters degree or equivalent also increased from 2000 to 2005. An interesting phenomenon with employees is that the percent without a high school diploma is also increasing. This group went from 3.7 percent to 9.3 percent of employees between 2000 and 2005. Hog farms are becoming increasingly specialized and larger. While the farrow-to-finish system remains the dominant system, its relative importance has decreased dramatically. It has declined from about 8 in 10 producers in 1990 to 4 in 10 producers in 2005. Contract finishers as well as wean-to-finish producers have shown notable growth. The percent of producers producing 25,000 or more pigs annually increased from 3.4 percent in 1995 to 15.7 percent in 2005. About one in twenty producers indicated they produced 100,000 or more pigs annually

Work Environment, Job Satisfaction, Top Employees Work Interests

A survey of pig producers and employees was conducted to document rends in the industry. These surveys have been conducted four times: 1990, 1995, 2000, and 2005. Trends show that hours worked per week in 2005 declined from the 2000 levels. Employees indicated that they worked, on average, 45.3 hours per week in 2005 as compared to 48.7 hours in 2000, a decrease of 7 percent. The typical U.S. worker reported the average work week to be 33.8 hours, 25.4 percent less than the level reported by pig production employees. Flexibility of work schedules appears to be increasing again. In 1995 26 percent of employees indicated that their weekend schedules were flexible or staggered by working part of Saturday or Sunday. In 2000 only 17.8 percent of employees reported this flexibility. This increased back to 20.6 percent of employers in 2005. Dust masks or respirators were provided by most producers (89.2%) and available to most employees (92.2%). However, the use of dust masks and respirators is low. Only one in four employees used them and onethird of producers used them. Ear protection was worn by a larger share of employees (64.5%). The rapid increase in the size of hog production facilities and their increased reliance on hired labor requires producers to be able to manage personnel. Use of employer handbooks, written job descriptions, work plans, work reviews and evaluations can help with this task. Surveys indicate that the majority of producers do not take advantage of these methods. However, the use of methods such as employer handbooks, written job descriptions, work plans have increased from 1990 to 2000. Interestingly, their use declined from 2000 to 2005. Employee satisfaction is high. In 2005 79.9% of employees indicated that they were either satisfied or very satisfied. Satisfied employees tend to work harder and are less likely to call in sick and are more productive. Employee aspirations and attitudes toward the pork industry have changed over time. For example, fewer employees want to own their own operation some day. They are looking at the industry as where they will be employed. Also, a high percentage (81.4%) felt their salary and benefits were competitive in their community. Women were less likely to feel this way

Employee Rosters Rise; Wages Continue To Climb

A survey of pig producers and employees was conducted to document trends in the industry. These surveys have been conducted four times: 1990, 1995, 2000, and 2005. Trends show that pig production operation sizes are increasing leading to an increase in the number of employees. Between 1990 and 2005 the average number of full-time employees per operation increased from 2.9 to 8.8; an increase of 20.3 percent. The wages of employees rose between 1990 and 2005 and wage discrepancies widened also. The average wage in the pork industry increased from $19,847 in 1990 to$35,718 in 2005, an 80 percent increase. The average wage increased by 23.5 percent between 1990 and 1995 by 26.1 percent between 1995 and 2000, and by 15.4 percent between 2000 and 2001. The average civilian wage increased by about 61 percent during the 1990–2005 time period. While the average wage growth over the past 15 years is good news for the industry employees, wage growth in the industry between 2000 and 2005 is not as encouraging; 15.4 percent for pork industry employees versus 21.2 percent for the average civilian worker. The industry has lost some of the wage gains it had during the 1990s. Men in the pork sector have enjoyed higher wages than women while wage growth was greater for women over the 1990–2005 time period. However, during the 2000–2005 time period wage growth for women dipped below that for men. Employees with a four-year college degree had a stronger than average wage growth. Wage growth for employees with a two-year college degree or less grew at a rate below the industry average. Between 2000 and 2005 the pay scale for managers was the highest (average of $38,060), followed by assistant managers (average of$33,115), then farrowing managers (average of $30,780), and herdsmen (average of$29,400). The percent of employees receiving bonuses and incentive pay declined from 57.4 percent in 2000 to 54.8 percent in 2005. There was a decline in the percent of employees receiving pig death loss bonuses. Benefits received by employees appear to be stable to declining during the 2000–2005 time period. A growth area of benefits has been in the pension and retirement benefit area

Looking for a Job, Finding the Right Employee

A survey of pig producers and employees was conducted to document trends in the industry. These surveys have been conducted four times: 1990, 1995, 2000, and 2005. Producers use a number of methods to locate employees and employees likewise use a number of methods to locate employment opportunities. The information job search networks are the dominant strategy used by producer and employees alike. Nearly half of the producers indicated they used word-of-mouth to find employees. About three in five employees also rely on word of mouth. Other methods used most frequently are newspapers, magazines and family referrals. Professional and college placement services were used more commonly by employees than producers. The time it takes, on average, to find an employee was 2.8 weeks in 2005, a reduction from 4.4 weeks a decade earlier (1995). Producers face the challenge of matching labor needs with the available labor supply. For some needs, labor supply is plentiful and easy to access. Workers can be hired by the day or month. However, as skills become more specialized, the pool of qualified workers becomes scarce. To maintain a consistent supply of quality workers, the producer must invest in training and compensation packages that encourage workers to acquire needed skills, stay with the farm once trained, and remain motivated to work to improve farm profitability. When labor is available only on a full-time basis, the addition or loss of an employee can have a sizable impact on the operation’s labor supply. For some operations, the labor force can be cut in half or doubled by simply adding or releasing one employee. A producer who ignores employee management issues impacts the operation because worker turnover can severely impair the farm’s productivity. Employees in smaller operations may require more general skills because their responsibilities are likely to be more diverse from day-to-day. Employees in larger operations will likely have more specialized skills and a more narrow set of responsibilities

Deriving a frequentist conservative confidence bound for probability of failure per demand for systems with different operational and test profiles

Reliability testing is typically used in demand-based systems (such as protection systems) to derive a confidence bound for a specific operational profile. To be realistic, the number of tests for each class of demand should be proportional to the demand frequency of the class. In practice however, the actual operational profile may differ from that used during testing. This paper provides a means for estimating the confidence bound when the test profile differs from the profile used in actual operation. Based on this analysis the paper examines what bound can be claimed for different types of profile uncertainty and options for dealing with this uncertainty. We also show that the same conservative bound estimation equations can be applied to cases where different measures of software test coverage and operational profile are used

Observations of C-Band Brightness Temperature and Ocean Surface Wind Speed and Rain Rate in Hurricanes Earl and Karl (2010)

No abstract availabl