Bullets

• Fifty-seven percent of employees say they know of an office romance that ended in marriage.

• The number of moviegoers age 50-59 rose 20% between July 2002 and July 2003.

• One-half of American workers (52%) live paycheck-to-paycheck. This includes most workers who earn less than $30,000 a year (87, as well as 34% of those who earn $75,000 or more.

• More than one-half (54%) of senior executives expect to work for seven or more companies during their careers, up from 9% in 1994.

• Some 41% of African American women, 38% of Hispanic women, and 35% of Caucasian women say their looks are “above-average.”

• The average wireless household uses only 452 of the 1,831 cell-phone minutes it pays for each month.

• About 57% of Hispanic moms speak primarily Spanish at home, while 25% only speak English and 17% speak Spanish and English equally.

• In an online poll by Career-Women.com, 70% of women say they have opted out of corporate work at some point in their careers. Most common reasons include taking several years off to spend time with family, pursuing non-profit or foundation work, and taking a job with the government. Some 62% of these women say they have no plans to go back.

• Women who worked full-time, year-round jobs earned 77 cents for every dollar paid to their male counterparts in 2002. This matches the all-time high reached in 2001. African Americans (female and male) made only 57 cents in 2001 for every dollar earned by whites, up from 55 cents in 1968.

• Three-quarters (76%) of male Hispanic Internet users and 71% of their female counterparts have made online purchases.

• According to Nielsen/NetRatings, three-quarters (74.9%) of Americans age two or older had home access to the Internet, this is up from 66% in 2003 to reach 204.3 million people.

• More than one-half (57%) of companies were sued by employees in 2003, up from 49% in 2002 but down from a peak of 62% in 1995. Frequent charges included racial discrimination (54%), gender discrimination (48%), age discrimination (46%) and discrimination due to a disability (37%).

• About one-quarter (23%) of adults (approximately 30 million people) access the Internet from places other than home or work. The most common locations are schools (27%), friends’ or neighbors’ homes (26%), and libraries (26%).

• Most (87.6%) of regular readers of Black newspapers do not read general-market daily papers on a regular basis.

• The average salaries of school district superintendents rose 12% in the past decade, after adjusting for inflation, and those of principals increased 4%, while teachers’ salaries dropped 2%.

• The growth in Internet users increased only 1.7% for the year ending April 2004, compared to 11.3% during the same period in 1999-2000.

• Corporal punishment of children by educators is prohibited in every industrialized country except for the Outback regions of Australia and 22 of the United States. During 1999-2000, US educators struck 342,038 children, down from more than 1.4 million children in 1980.

• Some 55% of Americans say traffic in their area has worsened in the past five years, and three in ten say it is “much” worse. About one in 20 people use mass transit.

• Some 68% of married women with children have a full-time job outside the home.

• Currently, there are 33 million Black, Hispanic and Asian women in the US, and they hold $722.8 billion in buying power. By 2008, they will be 37 million strong and have $1 trillion in buying power.

• More than four in 10 (42%) NASCAR racing fans are women, up from 36% in 1995.

• About four in 10 Internet users (39%) have searched for themselves online, 36% have looked for friends they’ve lost touch with, 29% have looked for family members, and 17% for ex-girlfriends or ex-boyfriends.

• The average household spent $2,063 on restaurants and carry-outs in 2001, up 1.7% from the prior year. The amount spent on restaurants and carry-outs were both 41%, while the remainder was spent at employer and school cafeterias, vending machines and mobile vendors.

• The proportion of consumers who asked that their names and addresses be removed from marketing lists grew to 87% in 2004, up from 58% in 1999. Similarly, about eight in 10 (81%) have asked companies to not sell or give their information to another company, up from 53% in 1999.

• According to Packaged Facts, retail sales of weight-loss products increased 88.7% from 1999 to 2003 to reach $4.5 billion. The strongest gains were in frozen dinners and entrees, food bars, meal replacement liquids and powders, and diet candies.

• Almost one-fifth of adult Americans, including 26% of women and 12% of men, are currently on a diet.

• One in five (19%) Americans think hospitals should be run by for-profit companies, while 21% believe the same way about nursing homes, 22% about health insurance, 25% about homecare, and 37% about pharmaceutical manufacturing.

• Less than three in 10 Internet users (29.3% of men and 23.3% of women) can tolerate more than three advertisements on a web page, while 34.2% will tolerate no more than one. Some 36.8% of users immediately leave a site that appears cluttered.

• Seven in 10 marketers (69%) say that blogging is more than just a fad. About 45% believe the word “blog” is descriptive; 33% say it’s silly and 22% describe it as ugly.

• Some 440 consumer magazines were founded in 2003. About 10% of the 6,200 consumer magazines published today in the U.S. are general-interest titles (vs highly targeted to a specific market), down from 30% two decades ago.

• In 2001, the US had 2.7 doctors per 1,000 people, compared to a median 3.1 doctors per 1,000 among all industrialized nations. Also, the US had 8.1 nurses per 1,000 (compared to 9.0 elsewhere), and 2.9 hospital beds (compared to 3.9 elsewhere).

• More than 800,000 Americans are expected to file for bankruptcy in 2004 because of medical debts, mostly from hospital bills.

• During 2002, the offshoring of business processes was worth $32 billion to $35 billion, and is projected to grow by 30% to 40% percent annually over the next five years. This will cause more job losses in the United States and make offshoring an industry with well over $100 billion in annual revenue by 2008.

• During 2003, 3% of US businesses implemented VoIP voice-over-Internet protocol) in order to reduce their long distance telephone expenses. This number is expected to quadruple to 12% by the end of 2004.

• In a survey of 254 global senior business executives, 66% of respondents say some of their staff works remotely, up from 54% in 2003. In the US about 19% of employees worked from home at least once a month as part of their primary job. Survey respondents say that the three business functions best suited for remote working are sales (64%), customer-service (49%), and marketing-related functions (40%).

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