Figures show the estimated time required by a wage earner making $2.05 per hour (the average earnings, including overtime, of a production worker in manufacturing in March 1957) to earn enough money to buy various items at their March 1957 average prices. Qualities are good average grades commonly bought by wage-earner families.

TABLE 34.-Estimated Worktime Required To Buy Food and Other Articles, United States, March 1957

TABLE 34.-Estimated Worktime Required To Buy Food and Other Articles, United States, March 1957-Continued

Electric sewing machine, standard head, console, with reversible stitch, sew

Woman's 2-piece suit, new wool, hard-finish fabric, fair workmanship.

Approximate worktime required to buy automobile (roughly estimated):

New 4-door sedan, Chevrolet, Ford, or Plymouth, with standard equipment.. 4-year-old used car (1953 model)

About 29 weeks

About 10 weeks

(Automobiles are usually bought on credit, with time payments spread over some 18 to 36 months.) Note.-Food prices are weighted averages of prices in 46 cities of 5,000 or more population in all parts of the country. Other prices given are averages for 10 large cities (New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Detroit, Baltimore, St. Louis, San Francisco, Cincinnati, and Atlanta).

For further data or for any information as to methods used, consult the source: U. S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Family Expenditures for Goods and Services

Food in 1952 accounted for nearly one-third of the current expenditures of the average wage-earner or clerical-worker family. Housing and home maintenance took one-fourth. It is difficult in the United States to consider an electric refrigerator, an automobile, or a radio a luxury item. However, household appliances and some other articles that are relatively more important to wage-earner families in the United States than in other countries, as well as tobacco and alcoholic drinks, have been selected for more detailed presentation under "Other items," below. The average wage- or clerical-worker family spends $23.41 out of each $100 of current expenditure on these items-nearly half of it on automobiles. It may be said that more than one-fifth of the family's total is available for spending as the family may wish; while most of the other four-fifths goes for such essential costs as food, rent, clothing, etc. Even within the latter groups there is considerable free choice, such as that which allows growing use of the luxury item, frozen fruit, for example.

TABLE 35.-Relative Importance of Expenditures for Various Goods and Services, City Wage-Earner and Clerical-Worker Families in the United States, 1952

Note. As it is impossible to list all of the great variety of items bought by families, many of the articles that are specifically named represent also certain other closely related articles which are not named. Heating stoves, for example, are included in the percentage for cookstoves.

Note that percentages are higher for small items bought often, than for more expensive items that the wage-earner seldom buys. Used cars, for example, took nearly as great a share of the average total as new cars; used cars are much less expensive, but many are bought by wage-earner families, so that they weigh heavily in the total. Similarly, local streetcar and bus fares averaged over 1 percent of expenditures; while railroad fares took little more than one-fourth as much out of the family purse, because the average family does not regularly use the railroad.

Figures are estimated from base weights used in the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index (p. 72), after excluding weight for purchase of a home.

Source: U. S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Food Expenditures of Urban Families, 1955

Urban families of all sizes spent about $30 a week for food and drink in the spring of 1955, according to a nationwide survey of household food expenditures made in April-June 1955 by the U. S. Department of Agriculture. As compared with 1948 data, food expenditures rose more rapidly than prices, reflecting to a considerable extent an “upgrading" of the diet-use of somewhat more choice or expensive types of food and the inclusion of more services, such as precooking of foods. Per capita expenditures for food increase as money income rises, according to the survey. Much of the increase represents outlays for meals, snacks, and drinks away from home. Thus families with annual incomes from $5,000 to $6,000 spent a little more than 321⁄2 times as much per person on food away from home as families with less than $2,000; while for food served at home they spent twice as much per person.

Meats account for about a fourth of the urban household's food dollar. Next come the dairy products group (excluding butter), with 15 percent, and cereal and bakery products with 10 percent.

TABLE 36A.-Average Expenditures per Urban Housekeeping Family for Food and Beverages, One Week in Spring 1955, by Size of Income

TABLE 36B.-Expenditures for Major Food Groups as Percent of Total Expenditures on Food for Home Use, Urban Housekeeping Families, One Week in Spring 1955

Note.-Data exclude expenditures for alcoholic beverages and money value of home produced food.

Source: U. S. Department of Agriculture, National Food Situation, November 1955.