> BLS DAILY REPORT, TUESDAY, MARCH 20, 2001:
>
> Negotiated wage increases continue climbing in 2001, says a survey by an
> employment reporting service, the Bureau of National Affairs. Factoring
> in lump sum payments, the average pay increase in labor contracts signed
> this year was 4.7 percent, compared with 3.7 percent for the same period
> in 2000 (The Wall Street Journal "Work Week" feature, page A1).
>
> The Society of Human Resource Management, in its annual corporate-benefits
> survey, finds that fewer companies are offering worker sabbaticals. The
> Alexandria, Va. professional group says last year 17 percent of
> respondents offered extended unpaid time off for research, vacation or
> travel, and 4 percent offered paid leaves. In 1996, 27 percent of
> companies polled offered unpaid sabbaticals and 6 percent paid ones.
> Tight job markets are seen behind the decline. The sort of worker
> generally eligible for a sabbatical -- long tenured and experienced -- is
> the sort now hard to replace. But cutting back can be shortsighted, some
> companies believe (The Wall Street Journal, "Work Week" feature, page A1).
>
> The average starting salaries for the undergraduate class of 2001, by
> major, are computers/information sciences, $48,269; engineering, $46,628;
> business/management, $38,631; accounting/finance, $37,786; education,
> $36,707; sales/marketing advertising, $35,581; nonprofit, $31,363:
> communications/media, $30,148; clerical/secretarial, $30,064; and other,
> $34,921. Source of the data is Jobtrak,com,Los Angeles (The Wall Street
> Journal, page B12).
>
> The number of undocumented immigrants in the United States appears to be
> far higher than the 6 million the government has estimated, according to a
> growing number of federal officials and other experts. The discrepancy has
> surfaced in recent weeks as the results of the 2000 Census have been
> released....Experts say 6 million may instead be 9 million. The presence
> of millions of people in this country previously unknown to the government
> has important policy implications...and could also explain why
> unemployment rates and wage trends have seemed out of step with the tight
> labor market of recent years. Lee Price, acting deputy undersecretary for
> economic affairs at the Commerce Department, said that, if the number of
> illegal immigrants is higher than previously thought, it could explain why
> unemployment fell more slowly in the 1990s than the growing number of jobs
> would indicate it should. It could also answer another question: Why
> didn't wages rise faster as unemployment fell?...Price and other
> economists started with a puzzle: The number of jobs people reported in a
> census survey (CPS) has long been lower than the number of jobs reported
> by employers to another government agency for tax purposes. In the 1990s
> the gap was 4 million. The economists tend to believe the employers, who
> must pay tax on the jobs they report. So they believe much of the
> difference between the two job totals could be explained by undocumented
> immigrants, whose numbers would throw off the census survey.... (D'Vera
> Cohn in Washington Post, March 18, page A1).
>
> DUE OUT TOMORROW: Consumer Price Index, February 2001 and Real Earnings,
> February 2001
>
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