> BLS DAILY REPORT, WEDNESDAY, MAY 10, 2000:
>
> RELEASED TODAY: Mass Layoffs in March 2000, indicates that 986 mass
> layoff actions by employers as measured by new filings for unemployment
> insurance benefits were reported during the month, according to BLS data.
> Each action involved at least 50 persons from a single establishment and
> the number of workers involved totaled 106,748. Although the number of
> layoff events and initial claimants for unemployment insurance were the
> highest for March since March 1996, this was due in part to a calendar
> effect. This year, 5 weeks of mass layoff activities were reported in
> March versus 4 weeks in 1996-1999. The total number of initial claimants
> during January-March of this year, at 433,968, was the highest since data
> collection for this program began in April 1995.
>
> The Employment Cost Index on a quarterly basis is not as accurate an
> indicator of compensation trends as the measure's year-over-year figures,
> the president of Joel Popkin Co. tells the National Association of
> Business Economists. One caveat, however, is that by concentrating on
> year-over-year data, ECI users might miss important economic turning
> points, he said. In a shorter period of time -- about 6 months -- the
> consumer price index can indicate a trend in inflation, Popkin says (Daily
> Labor Report, page A-8).
>
> By 2006, federal departments and agencies will need to replace more than
> 32,000 high-tech workers across the board because of turnover, deaths, and
> retirements, according to government estimates. In addition, agencies
> will need to hire 4,600 more people to fill newly created computer jobs.
> But again, the federal government is competing against high-paying
> dot-coms for the same workers. "If you graduate now with a bachelor's of
> science in computer information, typically you would become a GS-7.
> That's going to earn somewhere in the area of $28,000 to $30,000,
> explained a National Security Council's spokesman. "That same person,
> with that same degree, can go out to the Dulles access road or Silicon
> Valley and earn $90,000 to $120,000." One agency that saw the coming
> shortage was Internal Revenue Service, which put job incentives in place 2
> years ago that have insured that its corps of 7,650 techies remained at
> full strength. An accompanying chart of the federal white-collar work
> force shows that while between 1992 and 1998 the number of computer
> specialists in federal service have remained constant at over 53,000, the
> number of secretaries has decreased by 40.6 percent, contracting personnel
> by 13.7 percent, and air traffic controllers by 7.1 percent (The
> Washington Post, page A27).
>
> Unemployment is now only 3.9 percent, its lowest level in 30 years, writes
> Richard Rothstein in The New York Times, page A23. A dozen years ago the
> economy was in bad shape, with widespread unemployment. The United States
> could not seem to compete with other industrial nations that, with
> productivity growth, made better and less expensive products. Schools were
> widely blamed. The prevailing view was that high unemployment was mostly
> due to high school graduates who lacked the skills of German or Japanese
> workers. Today the crisis is a dim memory. Yet shools are, at best, only
> marginally better, so prosperity cannot be the result of school reform.
> That means that schools were not to blame for the nation's earlier
> dot-doldrums. It seems that today's productivity growth stems from years
> of accumulated innovation, and that American schools do, after all,
> produce a work force with adequate skills to use new technologies.
>
> The ratio of decline in the price of computers has slowed in recent
> quarters, says Business Week (May 15, page 38). As Michael Moran of Daiwa
> Securities America, Inc., notes, a big contributor to computer deflation
> in recent years has been rapid improvements in power and other features.
> The slowing rate of decline, he notes, may imply that the pace of
> innovation has eased somewhat.
>
> A new study of drug costs by Brandeis University, backed by 25
> organizations, including General Motors and the American Hospital
> Association, tracked purchases of 1.4 million people served by pcs Health
> Systems, a pharmacy benefits manager in Scottsdale, Ariz. The conclusion:
> In each of the past 3 years, drug spending rose a giant 25 to 28 percent
> and more than doubled for those over 65 (Business Week, May 15, page 59).
>
> Business Week (May 15, page 195) predicts that with oil prices receding,
> total import prices will likely incease 0.1 percent in April, after a 0.3
> percent rise in March and a huge 2 percent gain in February. They also
> say that export prices will likely rise 0.2 percent in April, on top of an
> 0.4 percent advance in March (Business Week, May 15, page 195).
>
> Business Week's predictions for Producer prices indicate that prices of
> finished goods will probably decline 0.2 percent in April, led by a drop
> in oil prices. They also conclude that prices excluding food and energy
> will probably edge up 0.1 percent last month. In March, total producer
> prices jumped 1 percent, while core prices rose 0.1 percent. (May 15, page
> 195).
>
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