> BLS DAILY REPORT, MONDAY, JUNE 19, 2000:
>
> The four U.S. regions and most states showed little or no change in
> jobless rates in May, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. As the
> national unemployment rate edged up to 4.1 percent in May, 41 states and
> Washington, D.C. recorded shifts of 0.3 percentage point or less in their
> jobless rates (Daily Labor Report, page D-5).
>
> White House Gives Managers New Task: Create Satisfied Workers. "HR is just
> as critical to agency management and planning as technology or budget,"
> Janice R. Lachance, the director of the Office of Personnel Management,
> said last week in a speech on the administration's new approach. The
> initiative comes at a time when federal agencies find themselves hard
> pressed to compete for talented hires in technology, accounting,
> scientific and legal fields. In the next five years, about half of the
> government's full-time work force will be eligible to retire or take an
> "early out." Although not all these employees will bolt for the door, the
> government seems assured of a huge talent drain. Lachance, speaking at a
> National Academy of Public Administration conference held at Gallaudet
> University, said the administration's new approach will help renew efforts
> "to recruit, develop and manage a high-performance work force."
> (Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com).
>
> Housing starts fell by 3.9 percent in May to their lowest level since the
> summer of 1999, the Commerce Department says. Total starts fell to 1.592
> million units at a seasonally adjusted annual rate from 1.656 million
> units in April. The weakness was all in single-family starts, which
> dropped 5.4 percent to a pace of 1.25 million units. In April, starts
> rose 1.6 percent, not as strong as the previously estimated 2.8 percent
> rise (Daily Labor Report, page D-1).
> __In the face of higher interest rates, the housing sector showed more
> signs of cooling: Construction starts for new homes fell last month, and
> a drop in new building permits suggested the trend will continue. New
> building permits, an indicator of future building activity, fell 4.3
> percent in May to an annual rate of 1.49 million. It was the fourth
> monthly decline in a row, following a drop of 2.4 percent to 1.56 million
> in April (The Wall Street Journal, page A15. The Journal's page 1 graph
> is of housing starts, 1998 to the present).
>
> Internet users have almost become an American majority, with 49 percent of
> U.S. homes online in May, according to Nielsen//NetRatingsCQ, a service
> partnership between Nielsen Media Research, Inc., and NetRatings Inc. The
> group estimates that 134.2 million Americans now have Internet access,
> compared with 119.2 million in December, a 6 percent increase. "We looked
> at age, race, income and even individual cities. They all showed
> consistent growth," said the vice president of electronic commerce at
> NetRatings here. He attributes this growth to improved technology, such as
> lower-cost personal computers and less-expensive high-speed Internet
> access, the recent cultural inundation of Internet advertising and news,
> and an improvement in the range and quality of service online The trend
> shows no signs of abating, either, though the survey did discover that
> about one-third of people with Internet access didn't go online in the
> past month (The Wall Street Journal, page C22).
>
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