My family and I just got back from a short vacation to Michigan to visit some of my husband’s relatives. They live about an hour or so outside of Detroit. I couldn’t believe all the lakes in and around where they live! Everywhere we went, there was a lake.

During our stay, we visited The Henry Ford, a museum complex in Dearborn. It is a great place to visit! We also went to the Ford factory where they build F-150 trucks. We all loved watching the assembly line in action.

Now, though, it’s time to get back to school and work. The “unofficial” end of summer is Monday, when we celebrate Labor Day.

So, it’s time for some Labor Day facts and figures! These tidbits are courtesy of wallethub.com:

• • 1882: Year of the inaugural Labor Day celebration, when 10,000 workers assembled in New York City for a parade.
  • September 1894: Year Congress officially made the first Monday in September a federal holiday.
  • 40%: Work force that belonged to unions in the 1950s, compared with nearly 11% in 2017.
  • Number 3: Where Labor Day falls among America’s favorite holidays. (Number 1 being Christmas/Chanukah, and number 2 is Memorial Day.)
  • 2 million: Number of Americans age 16+ in the labor force
  • $55.32K: Median household income
  • $27.05: Average hourly earnings for employees on private nonfarm payrolls
  • $7.25: Federal minimum wage
  • $13.25: Highest minimum wage, in Washington, D.C.
  • Breakdown of the workforce by sector of the economy:
    • Retail: 4.44 million
    • Food preparation and serving workers: 3.58 million
    • Cashiers: 3.56 million
    • General office clerks: 2.97 million
    • Registered nurses: 2.91 million
    • Customer service representatives: 2.77 million
    • Laborers and movers: 2.71 million
    • Waiters and waitresses: 2.58 million
    • Secretaries and administrative assistants: 2.25 million
    • General and operations managers: 2.21 million

What are your Labor Day plans? Let us know!

Speaking of Labor Day, our Panel Support Center will be closed on Monday, September 3. We’ll be back at 9 a.m. ET on Tuesday, September 4.

Not an NCP member yet? If you want to join the panel, just go to join.ncponline.com and sign up!

I’ve seen many family and friends living in Florida and other parts of the country who’ve posted on Facebook that their children have recently started school. Being from the Northeast and being used to school starting closer to Labor Day, this just seems way early! I mean, it was just Memorial Day, right? What happened to the summer?

Anyway, in “honor” of school starting, if not now, then very soon, here are some really great facts compiled by bluewatercredit.com:

• There are approximately 33 million elementary school children in the U.S, 17 million kids attending high school, and 8.8 million children in nursery schools and kindergartens.
• All told, including college students, there are about 78 million kids heading back to school every fall.
• There are about 8 million teachers in the U.S.
• The average family spends $700 in school supplies every year, adding up to $80 billion in annual sales.
• School buses have been around since 1915, but the official color of bright yellow wasn’t adopted until 1939.
• Across the country, there are approximately 480,000 registered school buses, taking 26 million children to and from school every day.
• The largest public high school in the U.S. is Morton High in Berwyn-Cicero, Illinois, with 8,000 students.
• Arizona State is the largest public university, with 81,000 students.
• The average pencil can be sharpened 17 times and write about 45,000 words or draw a line 35 miles long before it’s out of service.
• The average cost of a school lunch is $2.70 – $3.10, and 11.6 million children eat breakfast at school daily.

Panelists: If you are buying back-to-school supplies, please don’t forget to scan them! Many of these items are sold as multipacks. Please refer to the FAQs section on ncponline.com if you have questions about recording multipacks.

Have a great weekend!

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Our Summer Scavenger Hunt Sweepstakes just wrapped up – we hope you all had a chance to participate, and if you did, we hope you enjoyed the hunt. We had a lot of people enter this one and tell us it was a lot of fun!

Just to remind you, the objective was to go through past blogs and look for the eight beach-related images and then record the exact title of each blog that contained one of the symbols.

Congratulations to the winners! We reviewed all the correct entries, and then randomly selected five winners. The following individuals will each receive a $50 Amazon Gift Card claim code. (The winners have already been alerted via email.)

• Amy S. / amybs ..
• Karen P. / peart …
• Marie W. / mariet …
• Nicole R. / delprin …
• Vicky F. / lfasn …

Note: For privacy, we only used the first few letters of their email addresses.

Here are the blog postings where the eight beach-related images were located:

If anyone has ideas for future contests, let me know.

Enjoy your weekend! I hope where ever you are you have nice weather.

Everywhere I look, people are staring down at their phones. Whether it be my own friends and family, people walking down the street or in a mall, or drivers on their way to work. (Now that’s scary!)

We are completely connected. We love “consuming content.”

I recently saw a Nielsen report that said nearly half an adults’ day – 11 hours – is dedicated to listening to, watching, reading or generally interacting with media of various types. Sounds like a lot of time, but keep reading!

According to Nielsen, in the first quarter of this year consumers spent three hours and 48 minutes a day on computers, Smartphones and tablets. This is a 13 minute increase from the prior quarter; 62% of that time is attributed to app/web usage on their Smartphone. Adults 18+ spent on average 45 minutes per day on social media during the first quarter of 2018, with most of that time coming from smartphones, according to Nielsen.

When it comes to viewing video content within social networking sites/apps, 64% of adult smartphone users do so at least once per day. That number jumps to 72% when looking at the 18-34 demographic, according to Nielsen.

Overall video use, which is considered the time spent with a TV set, computer video, and/or using video focused apps/websites on Smartphones and tablets, came to nearly six hours per day for U.S. adults during the first quarter of 2018, according to Nielsen.

Meanwhile, radio reaches 92% of adults on a weekly basis, while live and time-shifted TV (that is, TV programming that is recorded and watched at a later time) has a weekly reach of 88%. Overall, live and time-shifted television accounted for four hours and 46 minutes of time, according to Nielsen.

What about you? How much time do you spend watching TV, listening to the radio, or on your Smartphone? Let us know in the comments section.

Summer Scavenger Hunt Sweepstakes
Don’t forget, you still have time to take part in our Summer Scavenger Hunt Sweepstakes! Here are the details:

• Eight beach-related images have been hidden in my past blog posts for you to find. (The images are small graphics of items you would find or use at the beach. The blog posts could be from this year or from previous years. That’s right, we’re not making this too easy!)
• When you find a beach-related image,make a note of the blog post title where you found the image. After finding all eight images, go to the link below and enter the exact titles of the blogs where you found each of the eight images.
• From all of the correct entries, five winners will then be selected in a random drawing. Each winner will receive a $50 Amazon Gift Card claim code! (Please make sure to give us your contact information so we can send you the prize, if you should win.)
• Note: If you’re having trouble finding some of the images while using a mobile device, it might be easier using a computer.
• For even more details, see last week’s blog.
• The contest ends on Wednesday, August 15.

Go here to post your responses: www.surveymonkey.com/r/NCPScavengerHunt

Thanks, and have a great weekend!

It’s back by popular demand! Our blog readers have told us they really enjoy our sweepstakes, so our latest one is here: It’s time for the NCP Blog’s Summer Scavenger Hunt Sweepstakes!

Similar to our other recent sweepstakes, I’ve hidden images in my past blog posts for you to find! You’ll need to go through all of my blog postings and look for EIGHT (8) beach-related images. (The images are small graphics of items you would find or use at the beach.)

When you find a beach-related image, make a note of the blog post title where you found the image. After you have found all eight images, go to the link below and follow the instructions. Enter the exact titles of the blogs where you found each of the eight images. (Here’s a little hint: Before you begin, you can go to the link below and see which images you’ll be looking for, although they’ll appear smaller within the blogs.)

Yes, I’ll acknowledge the obvious: I hope you spend time reading some of my past blogs. They’re all very interesting, if I do say so myself! LOL

Here’s all the info you need to know:

• To be eligible, you must provide the exact title of the blog posting. (You may find it easier to copy and paste the exact title into the response field.)
• From all of the correct entries, five (5) winners will then be selected in a random drawing. Each winner will receive a $50 Amazon Gift Card claim code! (See please make sure to give us your contact information.)
• The contest ends on Wednesday, August 15.

Go here to post your responses: www.surveymonkey.com/r/NCPScavengerHunt

Please check out the rules.

Have fun and good luck!

Amazon.com is not a sponsor of this promotion. Except as required by law, Amazon.com Gift Cards (“GCs”) cannot be transferred for value or redeemed for cash. GCs may be used only for purchases of eligible goods at Amazon.com or certain of its affiliated websites. For complete terms and conditions, see www.amazon.com/gc-legal. GCs are issued by ACI Gift Cards, Inc., a Washington corporation. All Amazon ®, ™ & © are IP of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. No expiration date or service fees.

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