> BLS DAILY REPORT, TUESDAY, AUGUST 17, 1999:
>
> Today's News Releases: The CPI-U increased 0.3 percent in July, on a
> seasonally adjusted basis, following two consecutive months of no change.
> Energy costs, which declined in each of the preceding 2 months, rose 2.1
> percent, accounting for almost half of the July advance in the overall
> CPI. The index for petroleum-based energy rose 4.0 percent in July, and
> the index for energy services increased 0.6 percent. The food index
> increased 0.2 percent in July, with the index for food at home up 0.1
> percent after being unchanged in June. Excluding food and energy, the
> CPI-U increased 0.2 percent, following increases of 0.1 percent in both
> May and June. Upturns in the indexes for airline fares and cigarettes
> accounted for the larger advance in the July all items less food and
> energy index. On a seasonally adjusted basis, the CPI for Urban Wage
> Earners and Clerical Workers rose 0.4 percent.
> __Real average weekly earnings increased by 0.1 percent from June to July,
> after seasonal adjustment, according to preliminary data. this rise
> stemmed from a 0.5 percent rise in the CPI-W. Average weekly hours were
> unchanged.
>
> The Department of Commerce seeks to shut down the National Technical
> Information Service, saying it is no longer viable because of the wealth
> of free information on the Internet, says The New York Times (page A11).
> The announcement of plans to close the agency comes just 3 months after
> the Clinton Administration rejected its plan to begin a fee-based Internet
> search service designed to help people more easily find and buy the
> Government documents the agency sells. On the same day that the service,
> usgovsearch.com was announced, the Administration halted it. And last
> Thursday, Commerce Secretary William M. Daley said he would ask Congress
> to close the service and transfer its extensive archives to the Library of
> Congress. "This way, the American people can find the documents they want
> via search engines that currently exist -- and the more powerful ones
> being created -- and download them for free," the statement from the
> Commerce Secretary said. "We will propose legislation to Congress next
> month to achieve these ends. Although the agency sells some of its
> reports for thousands of dollars each, the increased use of the Internet
> by Government agencies to make free documents available to the public has
> resulted in declining sales," Daley said. The decision was lauded by
> advocacy groups that have pushed the Government to post more reports and
> public information on line. The agency has 250 employees, who Daley said
> would be put on a priority list for reemployment in the Government if
> Congress approves the plan to close the service. The agency was turned
> into a self-sustaining one during the Reagan Administration, meaning it
> was charged with financing itself through sales. Daley said the agency
> has not operated at a profit since 1993, and from 1995 to 1998 registered
> more than $5 million in operating losses.
>
> The so-called "brain drain" of highly skilled Canadian professional
> workers going to the United States is real, largely because of lower
> taxes, higher salaries and greater job opportunities in the United States,
> an official of the Conference Board of Canada says. Although the number
> of permanent emigrants moving from Canada to the United States has
> remained relatively stable, the movement of nonpermanent emigrants has
> increased dramatically since the implementation of the Canada-U.S. free
> trade agreement and the North American Free Trade Agreement, the vice
> president of business research at the Conference Board of Canada, says
> (Daily Labor Report, page A-2).
>
> The labor market may be tight, but 80 percent of the 7.6 million United
> States companies with fewer than 100 employees lack retirement plans, and
> 70 percent of those have no plans to start them, according to the Spectrem
> Group, a consulting company in San Francisco. Still, within 2 years,
> Spectrem found, 167,000 more small companies do expect to start retirement
> plans with 1.6 million more workers likely to be covered (The New York
> Times, August 15, page 12 "Money & Business" section).
>
> Wages paid by U.S. farmers to their one million laborers are up 5 percent
> this year, more than the nonfarm blue-collar pay increase, says The Wall
> Street Journal in its page 1 "Work Week" column. The vice president of a
> 10,000 acre vegetable farm in Elba, N.Y., pays skilled workers such as
> tractor drivers as much as $14 an hour, 15 percent above last year. "I'm
> competing with all the factories hiring, too," the vice president says.
>
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