On the job: A look at work (and a bit of leisure) in honor of Labor Day | Lifestyle

President Grover Cleveland signed the law designating the first Monday in September as Labor Day, but Colorado was one of the holiday’s early adopters. It was the second of five states that passed laws in 1887 to establish the holiday, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

The first Labor Day celebration actually took place on Sept. 5, 1882, in New York City and was organized by the Central Labor Union. There was a parade that nearly flopped because no band had been organized for the marchers. Fortunately, the Jewelers Union of Newark Two showed up with a band and saved the day.

These are the top 10 best jobs of 2021 as reported by U.S. News and World Report.

Jobs were ranked based on their various attributes or qualities, including work-life balance, pay and stress.

Medical and health services manager

Speech-language pathologist

These are LinkedIn’s top 15 in-demand jobs for 2021. Jobs were ranked based on demand and jobs available.

Frontline Ecommerce worker

Loan and mortgage experts

Health care supporting staff

Business development and sales professionals

Experts in workplace diversity

Digital marketing professionals

Professional and personal coaches

Mental health specialists

User experience professionals

Artificial intelligence practitioners

American women’s annual overall earnings were 82% of what men made in 2019, according to a U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report released in December. This statistic is for women working full-time and salary workers.

Broken down by race and ethnicity

Asian women earned 77% as much as Asian men (Overall, Asian women and men earned more than women and men of any other race and ethnicity).

White women earned 81% as much as white men.

Black women earned 92% as much as Black men.

Hispanic women earned 86% as much as Hispanic men. (Overall, Hispanic women and men earned less than women and men of any other race and ethnicity.)

Among women workers age 25 and older, the median weekly earnings in 2019 for those without a high school diploma was $592, for those with a diploma it was $746 and for those with a bachelor’s degree or higher it was $1,367.

The average hourly wage for workers in Grand Junction was $23.61 in May of 2020, according to a July 14 report released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The nationwide average hourly wage is $27.07.

Employment in Grand Junction was highly concentrated in eight of 22 occupational groups.

Those groups, along with the number of workers in that field, are shown below:

Office and Administrative Support Occupations (clerks of all kinds, tellers, administrative assistants), 8,040.

Sales and Related Occupations (retail salespersons, cashiers), 6,500.

Food Preparation and Serving Related Occupations (cooks, bartenders, wait staff), 5,780.

Health care Practitioners and Technical Occupations (nurses, physicians, pharmacists), 5,060.

Construction and Extraction Occupations (carpenters, masons, electricians, plumbers), 4,500.

Transportation and Material Moving Occupations (commercial pilots, truck drivers), 3,920.

Educational Instruction and Library Occupations (teachers, librarians, teaching assistants), 3,390.

Maintenance and Repair Occupations (repair workers for vehicles, telecommunications equipment, heating and refrigeration units), 3,270.

AT WORK AND PLAYThe percentage of people working from home nearly doubled in 2020 because of the pandemic, according to an American Time Use Survey released July 22 by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Additional items of interest from this survey, which looked at data from May 2019 to December 2020:

The average time spent working declined by 17 minutes a day from 2019 to 2020.

“On a given day in 2020, 39% of the population spent time working, compared with 43% of the population in 2019,” the report said.

Time spent watching TV went up 19 minutes per day in 2020 to 3.1 hours per day.

Time spent in leisure/sports activities increased by 32 minutes per day to 5.5 hours in 2020. In households without children, the time spent in leisure/sports activities was 6.1 hours per day in 2020. For households without children, it was 4.4 hours per day.

Labor Day weekend signals the final days of the season for getting a swim in at an outside public pool in the Grand Valley.

n Lincoln Park-Moyer Swimming Pool, 1340 Gunnison Ave., will be open from 1:30–7:30 p.m. today and Monday, according to gjcity.org.

It’s open for the dogs on Sept. 12 with small dogs only from 10–11 a.m. and all dogs from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The indoor Orchard Mesa Pool is open during the cooler seasons.

n The outdoor pool at the Fruita Recreation Center, 324 N. Coulson, will be open from noon to 5:30 p.m. today and from 4–7:30 p.m. Monday, according to Fruta.org. Fruita’s indoor pool has year-round open hours.

Dog Daze at the outdoor Fruita pool will be from 5–7 p.m. Tuesday.

n The Palisade Community Pool, 571 W. Fifth St., is open from 1–6 p.m. today and Monday, according to palisade.colorado.gov.

Dog Days will be 4–7 p.m. Wednesday at the Palisade pool.

The Pew Research Center has a calculator that can show you where your household income in 2020 fit among five global income groups: high income to poor.

That calculator can be found at pewrsr.ch/38v6yjL.

According to a recent report by Pew, the pandemic decreased income in the middle class and increased poverty worldwide in 2020.

The analysis shows that the global high income class decreased by 62 million and the middle class decreased by 54 million people. The low income class increased by 21 million people and the poor increased by 131 million in 2020.

For this report, a global middle class annual income is about $14,600 to $29,200 for a family of four, which “straddles the official poverty line in the United States,” according to the report.

“By global standards, the poor live on $2 or less a day, or no more than $2,920 annually for a family of four,” the report said.