> BLS DAILY REPORT, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2000:
>
> Today's News Release: EXTENDED MASS LAYOFFS IN THE SECOND QUARTER OF 2000
> indicates that in the second quarter of 2000 there were 1,187 mass layoff
> actions by employers that resulted in the separation of 227,114 workers
> from their jobs for more than 30 days, according to preliminary figures.
> Both the number of layoff events and the number of separations were
> sharply lower than in April-June 1999, with events and separations at
> their lowest level for any April-June period since the resumption of the
> Mass Layoff Statistics Program in April 1995.
>
> Unemployment rates stayed at record low levels in most states during
> August, as strong payroll job growth continued, according to figures from
> BLS. August marked the second time since 1978 that jobless rates were
> below 6 percent in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, the agency
> says (Daily Labor Report, page D-5).
>
> Construction of new homes and apartments edged ahead 0.3 percent in
> August, with increased construction of single family homes outpacing a
> sharp decline in multifamily starts, the Commerce Department reports.
> August's start rate was a bit weaker than the 1.547 million a year pace
> forecast by the panel of economists polled September 15 by Macroeconomics
> Advisers in St. Louis. It trailed 3 straight months of declining activity
> (Daily Labor Report, page D-1).
> __Housing construction rose in August for the first time in 4 months.
> Starts on single-family houses increased as mortgage rates declined (The
> Washington Post, page E1).
> __Construction of new homes increased in August for the first time in 4
> months, as lower mortgage rates renewed interest from buyers (Bloomberg
> News, The New York Times, page C2).
> __Construction of new homes rebounded modestly last month after a 3-month
> decline, but the housing market remained cool compared with its peak
> earlier this year (The Wall Street Journal, page A2. The Journal's page 1
> graph is of housing starts, 1998 to the present).
>
> The world economy has continued to strengthen and will grow 4.7 percent
> this year, with the U.S. economy advancing a robust 5.2 percent, the
> International Monetary Fund predicts. The IMF's forecast for the global
> economy is 0.5 percentage point higher than predicted last April, while
> the U.S. forecast is nearly a percentage point higher (Daily Labor Report,
> page A-2).
>
> A World Bank report on global poverty says 1.2 billion people still live
> on $1 a day or less, says Robert J. Samuelson, with the comment that
> "outside East Asia, little progress occurred in the past decade" (The
> Washington Post, op.ed. page, page A33).
>
> Improved response from many minority communities helped fuel a turnaround
> in census response, said Census Bureau Director Kenneth Prewitt in
> announcing that a higher share of households returned their questionnaires
> this year than in 1990. Prewitt said 67 percent of U.S. households
> returned census forms, whether by mail, over the Internet, or via forms
> distributed at community centers. That was up from 65 percent a decade
> earlier. In April, census officials had said the return had equaled the
> 1990 rate (The Washington Post, page A12).
> __A higher percentage of households completed and returned census forms
> this year than in 1990, reversing a 3-decade trend away from participation
> in the national population count, census officials said today. The
> officials said 67 percent of the 120 million households that received a
> form in the mail, filled it out and sent it back, compared with the 65
> percent that returned the forms 10 years ago. Census Bureau figures that
> 29 states raised their response rates from 1999, with five states --
> California, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Nevada and Wyoming -- lifting
> rates by 5 percentage points (The New York Times, page A23).
>
> President Clinton yesterday signed into law a bill that extends long-term
> care insurance for 13 million federal employees, members of the military
> and their families. The employees will pay the premiums, but because of
> the size of the group, rates are expected to be 15 to 20 percent below the
> cost of individual long-term care policies (The Washington Post, page
> A31).
>
> Despite all the talk about prosperity in this digital age, tax return data
> indicates that the rising tide of bits and bytes is lifting the yachts
> much more than the rowboats. From 1986 through 1997, the latest year for
> which detailed figures are available from the Internal Revenue Service,
> the average income of the richest 1 percent of Americans soared 89
> percent, to $517,713 from $273,562. Those figures are after federal
> income taxes have been paid, and are expressed in constant 1997 dollars to
> eliminate the effects of inflation. To be counted among the top 1 percent
> in 1997 required an after-tax income of at least $268,889, suggesting a
> pre-tax income of at least $440,000. In 1997, the average income for the
> bottom 90 percent was $23,815, up a scant $364 or 1.6 percent from 1986.
> These figures were computed from an IRS statistics of income report by the
> Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonprofit Washington group that
> advocates policies that it says will benefit the poor. Another widely
> used measure of income, the Census Bureau survey data on median household
> income, also showed little change in overall income from 1986 to 1997.
> Adjusted for inflation, the median income rose just 1.5 percent during
> those years, to $37,005 in 1997 dollars. Unlike the tax data, the Census
> Bureau's survey figures tend to understate incomes at the high end,
> because of the methodology used to record large incomes. The bureau puts
> a cap on all income components -- salaries, for example, are capped at
> $999,999 -- so that a few extremely high incomes do not distort the survey
> averages (David Cay Johnston writing in The New York Times, "Money &
> Business Section", September 17, page 12).
>
> Even as the U.S. economy prospered during the last half of the 1990s, the
> employment rate of working age men with disabilities declined as did the
> share of their income generated by labor market activity, according to a
> study released by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. The
> increased availability of federal benefit payments to disabled workers
> over the last several years may be a factor in the decline of employment
> among these men, suggested one of three co-authors of the Fed report,
> according to the Daily Labor Report of September 19, page A-9. This item,
> in yesterday's BLS Daily Report, mistakenly said "the unemployment rate of
> working age men with disabilities declined," reversing the point of the
> Fed report. We regret the error.
>
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