BLS DAILY REPORT, MONDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2000:
Regional and State unemployment rates were stable during September, with the
Midwest posting the lowest regional jobless rate in the country at 3.5
percent, the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. All
four regions reported little or no change over the month, and 42 States
reported changes of 0.3 percentage points or less. The national jobless
rate slid 0.2 percentage point in
September, to 3.9 percent (Daily Labor Report, page D-1).
The Wall Street Journal's "Tracking the Economy" feature (page A15) predicts
that the Employment Cost Index figure for the third quarter, due out
Thursday, will be up 0.9 percent, according to the Thomson Global Forecast.
The previous actual change was 1.0 percent.
The U.S. economy's growth has slowed to a pace the Federal Reserve would
consider non-inflationary, says a Bloomberg News survey of analysts. A 3.5
percent growth rate was likely in the third quarter. The economy grew 5.6
percent in the second quarter, 4.8 percent in the first (USA Today, page
B1).
By 2002, the Internet economy in the United States will grow to $1.23
trillion, and in the five most prosperous European countries it will grow to
$597 billion, a report by Anderson Consulting predicts. Internet-based
companies, including pure dot coms, portals and access applications
companies, will employ more than 10 million workers in the United States and
Europe. In an effort to fill all the new jobs, a bill going through
Congress would increase the number of H-1B visas available to specialized
workers from overseas, particularly those from Asia. Germany has also taken
steps to import such workers. No other industry has created as many jobs in
such a short time as the Internet, the report says. The report contains
survey results from about 160 leaders of Internet companies and traditional
companies, and from government experts in eight countries who had been asked
their views on the state of the Internet. In two statements, 44 percent
agreed strongly to the statement "There is currently sufficient capital for
Internet entrepreneurs", 17 percent agreed, 16 percent disagreed, and 3
percent disagreed strongly. Forty one percent agreed strongly to the
statement "There are not enough suitably qualified people to fill jobs",
while 47 percent agreed, 11 percent disagreed, and 1 percent disagreed
strongly (The Washington Post, October 21, page 16).
Across the country, the number of farmers whose primary job is off the farm
has grown 12 percent from 1974 to almost 950,000 in 1997, according to the
census compiled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Meanwhile, the
number of farmers who listed their primary job as farming declined 33
percent during that time to about 962,000 (The Washington Post, page B1).
Recruiting Web sites have moved well beyond being simply online versions of
help-wanted newspaper sections, says Gaston F. Ceron writing in The Wall
Street Journal (page R34). The growth of e-cruiting is partly a result of
the tight labor market, but it also stems from the evolution of the industry
itself. In the early days of the Internet, job notices were posted free of
charge on bulletin boards. Those soon gave way to job-board sites --
essentially updated versions of a newspaper's help-wanted section. Now,
many of the sites are much more sophisticated: Not only do they help
visitors determine appropriate salaries and locations for a particular
industry, but they also provide career-counseling and net-working sessions.
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