Factoids

December brings not only Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, and Festivus. The month also heralds even more luminous and transcendent arrival: A new edition of the Statistical Abstract of the United States.  The mainstream press likes to call this annual publication “Uncle Sam’s Almanac” — but within the tightly-bound world of factoid junkies, it’s known as “1,000 pages of crack.”

This year’s edition is no exception. Among the delectables:

• In 2008, there were more than 270 million cell phone subscribers. The number of text messages sent on cell phones has more than doubled from 48 billion in December 2007 to 110 billion in December 2008. (Comment: The US has about 304 million citizens, which means that there are now about 9 cell phones for every 10 people — including kids. If you divide the total texts by the number of subscribers, that’s an average of 407 texts per cell phone susbscriber.)

• The average number of daily newspapers sold dropped from
  55.8 million copies in 2000 to 48.6 million in 2008.  (Comment: Selling 48.6 million units of anything every day isn’t terrible, actually.)

• In 2008, 37 percent of employers allowed all or most employees to
  periodically change starting and quitting times. Eight percent of employees were permitted to compress the workweek by working longer hours on fewer days, 8 percent to share jobs, 57 percent to return to work gradually after childbirth or adoption and 47 percent to take an extended career break for caregiving and other personal or other family reasons. (Comment: Better, but we’ve got a ways to go.)