The Social Wage as a Definitive Component of Political Parties' Philosophies^*

Keith Rankin, Economics Dept., University of Auckland.

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Abstract

The term 'social wage' is used frequently in a journalistic sense, to mean the provision of an ill­defined set of public services which invariably include education and health care. The term does not have widespread currency in international academic circles. This paper proposes a careful and comprehensive definition of the social wage, recognising that 'wage' is a word for the remuneration for a factor of production and that 'social' implies universal coverage. Thus the social wage comes to be seen as a form of collective property income, including 'royalties' for the use of natural and intangible 'sovereign' resources that are not subject to freehold ownership. As such, the social wage constitutes all public expenditure, including an income support system that pays pensions, benefits, subsidies and tax concessions. This paper proposes that political parties' philosophies essentially reflect (i) differences in the appropriate size of the social wage relative to other factor components of gross national product, and (ii) differences over the extent to which government or individuals should determine how the social wage will be spent.

Introduction

My definition of social wage focuses on the word 'wage', taking it to mean any factor payment rather than a payment specifically to 'labour'. Thus a salary is a wage. Profits and interest are the wages of capital. The social wage is the income accruing to the public interest, transcending the traditional class interests of labour and capital.

As a factor income, the social wage fund can be seen as a slice of a country's national income; a flat­rate levy on producers and consumers in return for the use of social - ie public domain - inputs, plus the earnings of publicly owned capitalist enterprises. As such it includes an element of economic rent, justified by the Georgeist view (Henry George, 1879) that private capital gains are largely a result of changes in the social environment, and that such economic rents ("free lunches", Mokyr 1990, p.3) should therefore be equally distributed as part of the public interest. Thus the social wage is effectively a form of property income. Because it is equally owned by everyone in the population, it should be distributed equally. The social wage should not be seen as redistribution, although it may be subject to redistribution.

Once accepted that taxation is one of the prices producers pay for their factor inputs¹, then that price can be seen as the present company tax rate; 33 percent in New Zealand, 39 percent in Australia. Indeed, all income tax can be regarded as company tax; as a tax on producers' contributions to gross domestic product (GDP). The New Zealand goods and services tax (GST) rate of 12½ percent can be taken as the price consumers pay for their use of the public domain. These are current prices, not in any sense 'efficient' prices. From this point of view, any tax concessions - eg subsidies or personal tax allowances - can be seen as disbursements from the social wage fund. The social wage fund² is gross public revenue. The individual social wage is gross public revenue per capita. Tax allowances, tax credits and subsidies are no different from benefits.

This social wage approach to social accounting - "social wage accounting" (Rankin 1995, 1996) - gives a baseline against which redistributive flows of public income can be assessed. As such, it is a way of making hidden subsidies visible - eg any instance of a firm not generating public revenue to the value of 33 percent of its contribution to GDP - as well as a means of rationalising social assistance payments. Thus, while income distribution in any present or past economy can be investigated through the tool of social wage accounting, it is also an approach that can help us to formulate socio­economic policies, and it is a means of interpreting political ideology.

Literature Survey

The social wage concept seems to be more widely used in Australia than any other English speaking country. Peter Saunders, Director of the Social Policy Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, is one who frequently uses the term. Author of Welfare and Inequality: National and International Perspectives on the Welfare State (1994), and principal author of Aspects of the Social Wage: a Review of Social Expenditures and Redistribution, published by the Australian Economic Planning Advisory Council (EPAC) in 1987, he focuses on the "minimum" definition, namely government spending on education, health, social security and housing (EPAC, p.8). Fred Argy, EPAC director, defines the social wage as "that part of government spending which provides benefits, either in cash or kind, to individuals and families" (Saunders 1987, forward). Alternative definitions (p.46) - eg Ann Harding - include some tax concessions, and other areas of government spending such as public works infrastructure, as distinct from "social wage infrastructure" (Harding 1994, p.1). In 1982, Harding noted (pp.13,21):

Some would regard all government expenditure as the social wage, on the grounds that all public expenditure is ultimately for the benefit of the entire community. Others would adopt a much narrower definition and view it as expenditure on education, health, social security and housing … There is no consensus about exactly what the social wage consists of, how it can be measured, or the extent to which it is to be an instrument for achieving greater equality.

In principle [the social wage] encompasses all government transfers and services, even though it is often difficult if not impossible to quantify the size of all of the effects. Government spending on defence, law and order, or subsidies to industry, all provide benefits which raise living standards, yet none is included in conventional accounts of the social wage. The rationale for their exclusion is not based on any clear principle … The more one searches for a [conceptual] solution, the more difficult the issues one uncovers. Rather than pursue this further, a pragmatic approach is adopted which includes the social wage expenditures in the areas of education, health, social security, welfare services, and housing and community amenities.

Saunders (1994, p.161) summarised the relationship between private incomes, taxes and the social wage as follows:

• Disposable Income equals Private Income plus Direct Social Wage Benefits minus Personal Income Tax
• Final Income equals Private Income plus Total Social Wage Benefits minus Personal Income Tax

This differs from my approach, in that

1. I remove personal income tax from the equation by treating it as part of company tax.
2. I include all government expenditure in "Total Social Wage Benefits"

I treat all personal tax allowances and tax credits as "Direct Social Wage Benefits".

Mark Trethewey (1994:365-366), an Australian, addresses the definitional issue: "Questions of what public and private expenditure to include in the social wage hinge on two considerations: first, on the value judgements that must be made regarding the definition of a 'benefit'; and, second, on the context within which the concept is to be applied. On the first question clearly opinion differs ... A conventional definition of the social wage may include government outlays under the budget classifications of education, health, social security and welfare, and housing and community amenities ... On other views it would include only the group of government cash transfers that confer a direct and measurable benefit on individuals and groups [or] it could embrace all government expenditure on the grounds that all public expenditure ultimately is for the benefit of the entire community." The union of all the above definitions in currency in Australia includes all government spending on goods and services, and all cash benefits, including tax allowances.

Adam Jamrozik goes further, emphasising the product mix rather than public supply (Jamrozik 1991; see also Graycar and Jamrozik, 1993, pp.68­80). Public goods available through the public sector are part of the social wage, as are what other have called "employment rents" (Schor 1991, van Parijs 1991). He says. The privatization of the social wage is the issue of concern here. Jamrozik says (pp.242­243):

The problem [of the two-tier welfare state] is well illustrated by the concept of the social wage … the public system for the poor, and the private system (supported by public funds) for the affluent. …Whenever a service is available in the public and the private sector (the market), inequality in access, usage and quality of service will increase. … Provisions located in the private sector but paid for from public funds tend to become 'invisible' and their users do not see themselves, and are not seen as 'welfare recipients'. For example, tax concessions or business subsidies are not 'visible' benefits and they do not appear in government publications as welfare expenditures. Moreover, such benefits as tax cuts, once they have been implemented, are no longer seen as benefits. Yet, it is in the area of income tax cuts that the Labor government has provided the most substantial benefits.

Fred Moseley (1995, p.204) acknowledges the unfamiliarity to mainstream American and British economists of the term 'social wage' when reviewing Anwar Shaikh's Measuring the Wealth of Nations: the Political Economy of National Accounts, by the use of single quotation marks. Shaikh and Moseley define the workers' social wage, in Marxist terms, as the value of government services received less taxes paid ("net taxes", Shaikh 1994, p.164). Shaikh concludes that in the 1980s, the "net social wage" (Shaikh 1994, p.141; Miller, 1989) paid to American workers became increasingly negative, and that it had also been significantly negative in the 1950s and 1960s.

Within Marxian and "neo­Marxist" economics, there was a "social wage debate" (Miller, 1989, p.82) in the 1980s (ref. Bowles & Gintis 1982, Shaikh and Tonak 1987), essentially around the circumstances of American workers and the net social wage. Bowles and Gintis call the social wage "citizen­wage expenditures" (p.75).

In choosing to regard income tax as a factor payment paid by producers, the debit side of the Marxian net social wage disappears from my definition. My definition of the social wage is thus consistent with the Marxian views of a gross social wage, although it is understood as property income, rather than as a redistributive offset to workers' taxes. While Miller's title - "Social Wage or Social Profit?" - is intended to convey the idea of a negative net social wage (a gain to capitalists), it unintentionally reinforces the idea that a social wage is in fact a profit; a return on capital - on social capital, broadly defined; the interest to society from producers' social or public domain inputs.

Friedland and Sanders (1986, pp.203­204) consider "two forms of social wages ... transfer payments to households and government services". Unlike the Marxists, they do not restrict their social wage constituency to wage earners: "First, social wages are directed toward individuals who would otherwise depend upon those who earn private wages or upon entrance into the labour market ... Second, social wages are a measure of income outside the private wage system ... a pool of politically manipulable resources available for buffering the incomes of those who cannot find sufficient work or wages to survive." While their definition reflects economic orthodoxy, and a degree of cynicism about the ability of government to manage a social wage fund, it is not exclusive of a more general definition and approach. They conclude that "the best way to hold back private wage increases is to have a better, not a worse, welfare state" (p.216).

In Sweden and Britain, the term 'social wage' has been used to mean a coherent watertight package of supplementary benefits (Rainwater et.al., 1986, pp.131­132). As such, it comes to mean a universal welfare system, which guarantees a minimum adequate income to all citizens:

In Britain, welfare is designed to supplement contributory and universal programs, hence the name 'Supplementary Benefits' … Unlike the American scheme in principle, the benefits are designed to fill the whole gap between available resources and requirements.

In Sweden, a system of local discretionary standards [of adequacy] prevails. In 1970, Stockholm added together the multiple discretionary benefits available to social aid recipients into a single standard of requirements; it became known as the 'social wage'. The standard immediately became the subject of political controversy, because many Conservatives believed that the social wage was too high and threatened work incentives. In Stockholm as in Britain individuals were entitled to receive all of the shortfall between their resources and their requirements.

Bill Jordan, in a 1984 article titled "The Social Wage: a Right for All", uses the term as analogous to "social dividend": "the social dividend approach, which is sometimes described, as by David Sheppard in the recent Dimbleby lecture, as the 'social wage'." This approach draws in the concepts of universality and factor distribution ('dividend'), away from the traditional focus on redistribution. A concept of a social dividend as at least an accounting identity within a social wage is central to my social wage accounting approach to income distribution. The social dividend can be seen as a 'distributed social wage' or a 'social wage tax credit', and the remainder of the social wage can be seen as a 'retained social wage'. The parallels to orthodox company accounting practices are obvious.

Nobel Laureate, James Meade, has been a long standing advocate of the social dividend approach (ref. Atkinson, 1995) as a basis for social policy. Furthermore he recognises that a social dividend can be constructed from existing graduated tax scales (Meade 1993, p.153):

The second stage [to a social dividend 'adequate' to replace conditional benefits in 'Agathotopia'] was to abolish all personal allowances under the Income Tax and the replace them by a tax-free Social Dividend of equal values. … This purely administrative change in fact made no difference to anyone's income [added emphasis], the Social Dividend replacing the Conditional Benefit in some cases and replacing the loss of personal tax allowances in other cases. … The third stage was an attempt to raise the Social Dividend or, as it may be called, the Unconditional Benefit.

Here we have a transparent social dividend which can be simply placed within the social wage, at the expense of the tax allowances which blur the divide between the social wage and private incomes. The 'third stage' represents a political strategy to raise the social wage by raising the social dividend part of public expenditure. Meade's form of social wage accounting comes close to the "Basic Income / Flat Tax" proposals discussed by Atkinson, which specify the key parameters of a politically contestable system of social wage accounting, although not actually using the terms 'social wage' (specified in essence by the 'flat tax' concept) or 'social dividend' (specified by the 'basic income' concept).

A final use of the term 'social wage' is that used by J.C. Weldon, a scholar of classical economics. He uses 'social wage' to mean the income of the sovereign, whether or not the sovereignty is democratically constituted (Weldon 1988, p.41 incl. n62).

The theorist today who would follow the classicists in deferring to reality must notice at least one great change in the structures that determine distribution. There is an ever widening difference between the private and the social wage, between the private and social share of the surplus. ... One would not be at all surprised, incidentally, to learn that the ratio of social to private wage declined from Petty to Marx, and that its rise in this century has been a return to the much earlier proportion.

This seems to be a very useful general approach to the social wage, in that it introduces the whole issue of economic sovereignty as a basis for evaluating the allocation of the social wage fund. We can say that the sovereign receive the "lion's share" (Lowry, p.228) of the social wage.

Social Wage Accounting

Because the price attributed to social inputs taken collect represents a slice of national income, it must be specified as a flat tax rate. The key parameter that determines the relative size of the social wage is the company tax rate, which we can call the 'base rate of income tax'. In New Zealand, that rate is 33 percent. There is no reason why the 33 percent cannot be deducted by firms before they dispense wages and refundable tax credits to their employees, especially as 33 percent is also the upper rate of a two­step scale⁵. In reality, that does happen already to a large extent, in the form of PAYE and dividend/interest withholding tax⁶.
The GST rate is also an important determinant of the size of the social wage. To some extent there can be a trade­off between income tax and GST. While, GST is harder to avoid, income tax is payable by foreign owned domestic firms. It is my view that foreign enterprises operating in New Zealand should pay a significant amount for the public inputs they use; therefore the emphasis should be on income taxation.
The individual social wage is the equally divided aggregate social wage; estimated at $11,600 per man, woman and child in New Zealand in 1996/97. The individual social wage is itself divisible four ways:

1. A universal cash payment; equivalent to Jordan's 'social dividend'. In hypothetical societies with a flat personal tax scale⁷, there are no tax allowances, and therefore the social dividend is zero (unless there is a separate universal basic income, treated as a pension rather than as a tax credit). The standard tax allowance received by all middle­high income recipients represents a social dividend. Since July 1, that allowance has risen in New Zealand from $2,779 (payable to all persons grossing at least $30,875) to $3,933, payable in full to all individuals grossing at least $34,200 per annum. Thus the 1996­97 tax cuts can truthfully be seen as the "long­promised social dividend" (Clifton 1995) or a "social dividend of sorts" (Berryman 1995). Indeed, it is only because of the lack of social wage accounting principles that we get the irony of a tax cut targeted at low­middle income earners ending up giving the biggest social dividends to individuals on middle­high incomes.
   

   There can be some caveats on full universality; for example, children's social dividends can be accounted for separately from those of adults. And, it is possible to have a tax surcharge as a means of clawing back some people's social dividends; indeed that is exactly what does happen to low income earners under the present tax­transfer regime. Conceiving existing tax allowances as a formal social dividend or basic income, the amount can be accounted for as a Social Wage Tax Credit (SWTC). Thus we can say that all adult New Zealanders receive an SWTC of $3,933 per annum, a tax credit that is subject to a low income clawback, a low­income surtax (LIS). Table 1 shows how we can think of existing tax allowances as universal tax credits, using the concepts of a base rate of income tax (33%), a social wage tax credit ($3,933), and a low­income surtax.

   Beneficiaries and superannuitants in New Zealand can be said to receive a social dividend of $3,933 plus one or more transfer payments; ie existing benefits can be considered as a sum of two parts. In that way, the already legislated for 1997 round of tax cuts which raise the SWTC from $3,933 to $5,130, could be paid to beneficiaries as well as employed persons.

2. Government expenditure on goods and services - including core social wage spending (education, health, housing), public works, public administration and debt service. Thus, government expenditure on, say, education, is neither free nor tax­funded. It is social wage funded; every individual pays equally for their public services. We can also account for children's social dividends as contributing to, say, education spending; it would not be wrong to claim that children substantially pay for their own education.

3. Redistribution. Transfer payments, which top-up any social dividends, are funded from each person's retained social wage, or from any social dividend clawbacks, or from any penal taxes on high income earners⁸. Thus, the social wage fund is a critically important source of intergenerational redistribution, a means by which investment in all children can take place, and by which all workers including the low­paid and the unpaid receive recognition in retirement for their contributions.

   The lower the social dividend the more such social wage funded redistribution is required to keep people from falling below the poverty line. In order to escape from the poverty trap which results from an accumulation of abating benefits and surtaxes⁹, there could be a single abating supplementary benefit which would be set in accordance with some kind of points system. Points could be awarded on account of, say, the number of children being supported, sole­parenthood, being over retirement age, disability, unemployment, excessive rent. Under this approach, there would be just one abatement regime to contend with.

   Applying social wage accounting to New Zealand at present, we can call all transfer payments in excess of the $3,933 SWTC 'supplementary benefits'.

4. Repayment of public debt. This slice could be either positive or negative, depending on the economic cycle. The social wage acts as an automatic stabiliser, to minimise the size of economic fluctuations. If negative, it means that part of the social wage is being funded by government borrowing. Under a balanced budget fiscal policy, a government's budget should come close to balance across the business cycle.

Being a slice of national income, the social wage is automatically indexed to GDP; ie the tax rate stays the same unless adjusted through the political process. In the long run, the relative contribution of intangible public domain inputs almost certainly has risen. Certainly, the base rate of income tax should be rising over time in any economy experiencing long­run 'total factor productivity' growth.

Political Philosophies

In general, the two parameters represent the two distinct sides of the fiscal equation: (i) revenue; the creation of an social wage fund through a potential combination of taxes, capital market investments and deficit finance, from which the major share will be an income tax, and (ii) expenditure; the subdivision of the individual social wage into a potential combination of social dividend, government expenditure, redistribution and debt repayment.

Some elements of (i) or (ii) might be missing (ie zero-rated) in the policies of any particular political party. For example, a party like ACT¹⁰, with a flat tax scale and no universal tax credits, has a zero­rated social dividend. A party advocating a universal basic income as the sole form of cash welfare provision has zero-rated redistribution.

The parameters of the social wage - once made visible to the public - are politically contestable. The political difficulty, at present, is that, in the absence of a formerly adopted set of social wage accounting principles, the key social wage parameters are not transparent to the public; hence they cannot be central to political debate. I see these social wage parameters as the defining characteristics of political parties' philosophies. Thus, a left­wing party is one which favours a high social wage relative to national income; the key parameter being the base tax rate that they advocate¹¹. Conversely, a right­wing party would favour a low base rate of income tax. (The present 33 percent tax rate defines current government as right­wing.) Both would claim to be in favour of economic justice; central to left­wing philosophy is the idea that economic justice means a relatively equal distribution of income. The "left vs. right" philosophical axis is about variations of social inequality.

The other key parameter is the "libertarian vs. authoritarian" axis. 'Libertarians' - believing that individuals can best spend or invest their own incomes - favour a high social dividend relative to an individual's social wage. Conversely, 'authoritarians' distrust individuals, and seek to spend their social wage for them in the form of public expenditure and targeted transfers. Current National Party ideology with respect to this axis is confused, thanks to the lack of transparent social wage accounting principles. Essentially higher social dividends are being granted at tax cuts, but for all lower income recipients, beneficiaries and caregivers, the increased social dividends are being recovered through effective low­income surtaxes. The social wage tax credit as an individual's social dividend - expressed as a percentage of the individual's social wage - would be the key parameter which would place a party on the libertarian­authoritarian spectrum.

It is not really possible to fairly classify most current political parties as authoritarian­left, libertarian­left, authoritarian­right or libertarian­right; social wage accounting principles are not as yet common currency¹². But, the Alliance is genuinely committed to a universalist high social wage policy, and at least the Greens and the Democrats within the Alliance have a history of support for social dividends. It would be plausible to suggest that the Alliance could become the basis of a libertarian­left party. On the other hand, one could imagine both Labour and the Alliance dividing and reforming into libertarian­left and authoritarian­left parties. National would probably show up as moderately right and moderately authoritarian. ACT is distinctly authoritarian­right¹³, due to its strong preference for a fully­targeted income support system, compulsory retirement savings, and minimal if not zero income taxes. Libertarianz would clearly fit as libertarian­right¹⁴, although the social wage would be so small that the difference between libertarian far­right and authoritarian far­right wouldn't matter very much.

Bill Jordan said in 1984 (p.144): "The market and socialist versions of the social dividend approach differ sharply from each other. The market version emphasises the benefits of rising productivity, flexibility of wages and labour, and lower costs to industry. It runs the risk of keeping [social] dividends below true subsistence level ... The socialist version, which I favour, would ... involve a much more active role for the state, and give higher priority to industrial democracy, participation and freedom." He clearly establishes his position as libertarian­left.

Much of the essentially European academic debate about basic incomes and the priority they should take vis-à-vis other forms of public expenditure represents the clash within the left between libertarian and authoritarian socialists (van der Veen & van Parijs et.al., 1986). The division on the right is more characteristic of debate in the United States, where the social wage is small; between adherents of Friedmanite negative income tax proposals (Greenwald 1983; ref. "social dividend" / "negative income tax") and between those who seek highly conditional and targeted forms of income support characteristic of "the New Social Contract" (Davey 1995).

In New Zealand, social wage accounting concepts are compatible with the economic rationalism behind the 1991 Employment Contracts Act (ECA). They can also provide some clues about how a left­leaning government could use the social wage to reverse the tide of inequality which appears to have accelerated in the 1990s¹⁵, and the simultaneous benefit cuts that gave the ECA space to bring about a significant degree of downwards wage flexibility.

Conclusion

I will conclude with a quote from Albert Hirschman (1994) about the fear of change on the part of established interests, and about how that fear is transmitted to the public in a way that consolidates public support for the reforms. When obviously interested parties actively campaign against political reforms, those reforms become a "self­refuting prophecy".

With a [popular] reform having been adopted in spite of strenuous [conservative] opposition, it often turned out, to much surprise, that the reform, that famous "leap in the dark", could be lived with. The result was enormous relief among the owners of capital, political stabilization, and a period of sustained economic growth and prosperity.

The concept of the social wage may be threatening to established interests, given that it is highly suggestive of a pattern of reform that would reverse the direction of recent trends towards lower tax rates. It is perhaps better for public discourse that they promote right­leaning political parties explicitly advocating a low social wage. In the end, the private sector stands to benefit from a prosperous community. If a high social wage goes some way to achieving such prosperity, then the result can be a win­win outcome; increased economic efficiency and improved economic justice. To give one historical example, the private sector was very fearful of changes a Labour Government might bring in 1935. That fear had evaporated by 1938; New Zealand businesses had become much more prosperous than they were five years earlier.

Collected Footnotes / Endnotes:

¹ Like a private wage, a social wage can be both a price and an income.[return]
² Tax avoidance can be understood as a means of generating hidden subsidies.[return]
³ The aggregate social wage could also be called 'aggregate social wage', or 'gross public revenue'.[return]
⁴ Profits earned in New Zealand but not owned by New Zealanders are a part of New Zealand's GDP but not its GNP. Conversely, profits earned outside New Zealand by New Zealanders are part of GNP, not GDP. The appropriate income tax base for social wage accounting is GDP; foreigners' contribution to New Zealand's GDP must be taxed for their use of New Zealand's public domain resources. While, some of New Zealand's social inputs are global rather than national, the use of such inputs in New Zealand production can be taken as equivalent to the use of the national public domain. Global public domain inputs - such as scientific knowledge - complement national and local forms of private and social capital, thereby becoming more valuable where they are more readily mined.[return]
⁵ While nominally a two-step scale (21.5% and 33%) it is really a three step scale (15%, 24% and 33%). The first step is classed as a low income rebate.[return]
⁶ One obvious reform that might result from social wage accounting would be for us to express all wages, dividends and interest net of income tax. Means tested benefits then could be abated with respect to net personal or household incomes. The concept of gross (before-tax) personal incomes would become redundant and disappear from our culture.[return]
⁷ Such as the New Zealand prescribed in the Government's 17 December 1987 tax reform.[return]
⁸ Taxes levied in excess of the company tax rate, as in the Australian tax scale.[return]
⁹ Explicit surtaxes in New Zealand include Child Support liable parent 'formula contributions', student loan repayments, and the NZ Superannuation tax surcharge.[return]
¹⁰ Formerly, the New Zealand Association of Consumers and Taxpayers, founded by Sir Roger Douglas (Minister of Finance 1984-1988) in accordance with the principles laid out in his book Unfinished Business.[return]
¹¹ Typically the base tax rate should be the company tax rate, but there might he exceptions, in particular with respect to historical analysis, where the company tax rate could be regarded as having a penal component. For example, high company tax rates could be considered as part of a trade-off in a protected economy.[return]
¹² The terms 'authoritarian' and 'libertarian' have both been used by various writers in a pejorative way. Here I use neither term pejoratively.[return]
¹³ Quite distinct from fascism. ACT is moderately authoritarian and far 'right'. Fascism is moderately 'right' and extremely authoritarian.[return]
¹⁴ Perigo (1996), leader of Libertarianz sees ACT as very much an authoritarian party: "ACT's policies - all of them, not just welfare - are based on coercion", despite the popular perception that they are a libertarian party.[return]
¹⁵ The 1996 census results should give a good picture about the distributional impact of policies introduced at around the time of the previous census; policies such as the 1989 Reserve Bank Act, the 1991 Employment