> BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS, DAILY REPORT, JULY 25, 2001:
>
> The telecom sector's "bust" is reverberating loudly across the economy,
> with the impact on jobs and investors proving much bigger than that of
> dot-coms, says The Wall Street Journal (page A1). So far this year,
> telecom service providers and equipment makers have announced about
> 225,000 job cuts, according to a tally by The Journal. That's equal to a
> fifth of all announced layoffs in the U.S. recorded by ISI Group, a New
> York economic research firm. Not all announcements are followed up with
> actual job cuts, and some of these layoffs are occurring outside the U.S.
> Even so, the total announced cuts in telecom already far surpass the
> 134,000 in the dot-com sector logged by The Industry Standard magazine
> since December of 1999. The unemployment rate, still historically low,
> will help a lot of those people find new jobs, but probably at less money.
> Economy.com says telecom salaries average between $57,000 and $75,000,
> compared with the national average of $43,000.
>
> Unemployment-insurance claims triggered by layoffs at large and midsize
> companies increased in all regions during the first 5 months of this year,
> compared with a year earlier. The government's mass layoffs data, which
> track claims filed due to layoffs of 50 or more workers at one facility,
> showed the industrial Midwest and South were hit hardest. But data for
> just May hint that layoffs there may be slowing as factories finish
> cutting inventory. In Indiana, mass-layoff claims rose only about 19
> percent in May, compared with 136 percent for the whole 5 months. All
> told, 878,000 U.S. workers suffered mass layoffs from January through May;
> manufacturing jobs accounted for 47 percent of that total (The Wall Street
> Journal, page B12).
>
> Two-career married couples are working an average of 700 more hours each
> year than couples were working in 1969, according to the Bureau of Labor
> Statistics, says the advertisement "Franchising Today" in USA Today (page
> 13B). Similar increases wre found for couples with or without children.
> The greatest increase came in families with children under the age of 3.
> In addition, the percentage of dual-income married families who work more
> than 40 hours a week has increased significantly. Paid-hours in
> single-parent households also increased 28 percent. A 1999 Council of
> Economic Advisors Report estimated that working families who had children
> less than 18 years old had 22 fewer hours per week to spend with their
> families.
>
> Sales of used homes dipped in June, but still remained near record levels,
> further evidence of the housing market's resilience in the face of the
> sluggish economy. After jumping by 2.7 percent in May, existing home
> sales declined by 0.6 percent in June to a seasonally adjusted annual rate
> of 5.33 million. That was close to May's 5.36 million, which marked the
> third highest level on record, the National Association of Realtors
> reports (Jeannine Aversa, Associated Press,
> http://www.nypost.com/apstories/business/V4353.htm)
>
> Sales of U.S. existing homes slipped in June, a realtors' group says, but
> the housing sector continued to turn in a strong performance in an
> otherwise slumping economy. The median sales price for existing
> single-family homes reached a record of $152,600 in June, up from a
> revised $145,000 in May (Reuters,
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48413-2001Jul25.html).
>
>
> DUE OUT TOMORROW: Employment Cost Index -- June 2001
>
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