What do people do at work?

Journal for Labour Market Research

Table 2 Math, reading, writing, and document use

	All	Upper WC	Lower WC	Upper BC	Lower BC	Service
Percentage (weighted)	100	36.1	25.4	10.3	13.0	15.1
N (unweighted)	2304	1010	569	161	271	291
Math (α = 0.81)
1. Any math	94	95	97	94	91	88
2. Add/subtract	86	93	90	87	78	73
3. Multiply/divide	78	89	82	81	65	57
4. Fractions	68	82	68	70	58	40
Any more advanced	22	35	9	41	19	4
5. Algebra (basic)	19	30	8	36	16	4
6. Geometry/trig	14	20	5	29	15	2
7. Statistics	11	22	5	10	6	2
8. Algebra (complex)	9	14	3	16	8	2
9. Calculus	5	8	1	8	5	1
Reading (α = 0.80)
1. Any reading	96	99	97	91	91	95
2. One page	82	96	86	72	57	67
3. Five pages	54	81	47	46	26	32
4. News articles, et al.^a	42	64	37	27	21	24
5. Prof’l articles^b	38	65	26	24	15	23
6. Books	53	76	40	53	35	38
Writing (α = 0.64)
1. Any writing	91	99	93	83	80	83
2. One page	61	86	56	46	36	41
3. Five pages	24	47	13	12	7	9
4. News articles, et al.^a	9	20	4	1	4	3
5. Books/prof’l arts^b	3	7	0	0	0	2
Documents
1. Use any forms	67	78	77	61	46	46
4. Form complexity^c	3.16	3.99	3.65	2.62	1.84	1.86

Note: All figures are percentages unless noted
^aCategory includes articles or reports for magazines, newspapers, or newsletters
^bCategory includes articles for scholarly, scientific, or professional journals
^cMean values on a rating scale ranging from 0 = no form use, 1 = extremely simple, 11 = extremely complicated