BLS DAILY LABOR REPORT, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 19, 1996: Today's News Release: "BLS Reports on the Amount of Formal and Informal Training Received by Employees" says that employees who work in establishments with 50 or more workers received an average of 44.5 hours of training in the period May-October 1995, according to a survey of employees conducted by BLS. Of these training hours, 70 percent or 31.1 hours were spent receiving informal training, while 13.4 hours were in formal training. The survey also found that in May-October 1995 period, an estimated $647 per employee was spent on wage and salary costs of training, with about 65 percent of the amount spent on informal training. The Boskin report on the CPI has come under considerable discussion, as well as various other ideas concerning the index: __Writing in The Washington Post (page E1) John M. Berry reports that "The size of the overstatement 'is a gross exaggeration,' said economist Barry Bosworth of the Brookings Institution. "Their measure of the upward bias is biased." On the article's jump page (E10) Berry says Commissioner Abraham is expected to say that a few of the commission's recommendations could be implemented, at least in part, by BLS. But she also will stress that there is no way to deal with many of the product quality or variety issues raised by the Boskin report, because they involve subjective judgments about value and cannot be quantified. __The New York York Times (December 18, page D1) discusses the problems of balancing quantity, quality and inflation and points out that by failing to account for some improvements in the quality of goods and services, the economists (who wrote the Boskin report) contend that the CPI has overstated the growth in the cost of living by 1.1 percentage points. Listed are some of the key components that the commission says should be improved, with a brief explanation of what should be done. __The Washington Times carried a lengthy commentary on the CPI December 16, and said that the Congressional Budget Office estimates that knocking 1 percent off the CPI would reduce the budget deficit over the next 5 years by approximately $134 billion, and that the reforms proposed by the commission may address shortcomings in the present formula, but they don't eliminate the most fundamental flaw. Despite arguments from supporters of the North American Free Trade Agreement that the pact would bring big employment gains to the United States and warnings from opponents that it would cost hundreds of thousands of jobs, the accord's net impact so far has been slight, according to a study by researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles, to be released today. Using a new model of how exports and imports influence jobs in various product categories and regions, the study estimated that the net job grain to the United States since the agreement took effect at the beginning of 1984 has been just 2,900 jobs. The net figure, however, masked a much greater level of both job losses and gains among different companies, increased imports to the United States killed an estimated 28,168 jobs the last 3 years, the study said, while increased exports supported creation of 31,156 jobs. Data compiled by BNA for the first 50 weeks of 1996 show that the median first-year increase in newly negotiated collective bargaining agreements in all industries is 3 percent an hour. In manufacturing agreements, the year-to-date median wage increase is also 3 percent (Daily Labor Report, page D-1). A new model of education, training, and employment services is needed to prepare workers for the workforce of the future, according to a report by the Hudson Institute to be released in the spring. The report is a sequel to the Institute's landmark study "Workforce 2000", published in 1987, which predicted widespread labor and skill shortages and became the seminal document on the subject of the rapidly changing workplace. BLS did not agree entirely with the Hudson study (Daily Labor Report, page A-11).
