The Labor Department reported on labor contracts.

Major collective bargaining settlements reached in the first half of this year provided average annual wage increases of 2.9% over the life of the agreements, the department said. First-year wage increases averaged 2.8% for the 850,000 workers covered by agreements reached in the first six months of the year, the department reported. More than 600,000 workers covered by first-half 1985 contract settlements in private industry had wage increases averaging 4.4% in the first year of their contracts, and nearly 200,000 had no wage changes in the first year.