BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS, DAILY REPORT, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2002: The Bush administration's budget request for fiscal year 2003 includes $511.1 million dollars for the Bureau of Labor Statistics, an increase of $21.5 million over FY 2002, and 2,529 FTE, the same level as FY 2002 . Included in the request is $5.9 million for modernizing the computing systems of the Producer Price Index and International Price Program, and making important improvements to both programs. In FY 2003, BLS will continue to develop monthly estimates on the numbers of separations, new hires, and current job openings for the economy as a whole and major industry groupings. In conjunction with the Census Bureau, BLS will begin in FY 2003 to conduct the American Time-Use Survey. BLS will also implement the conversion of all national, State, and area estimates to the North American Industry Classification System, including reconstruction of historical time series, and complete the 4-year phase-in of the Current Employment Survey (CES) sample redesign. The entire CES program will be based on a probability sample design for the first time. In addition, BLS will continue to improve the quality of estimates produced by the Local Area Unemployment Statistics program, and to develop the capability to produce additional demographic data at the local level. The BLS request includes $223.0 million and 497 FTE for the Labor Force Statistics program. The FY 2003 request includes $5.9 million to modernize the computing systems for monthly processing of the PPI and U.S. Import and Export Price Indexes, and to make important improvements in both programs, such as annual weight updates to the U.S. Import and Export Price Indexes and experimental PPIs for goods and services that will provide the first economy-wide measure of changes in producer prices. The BLS request includes $160.7 million and 1,097 FTE for the Prices and Living Conditions program. In FY 2003, BLS will continue its ongoing plan to update the sample of establishments that is used to produce the local area pay data, the Employment Cost Index, and the Employee Benefits Survey. BLS also will publish the results of the 2001 Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses and 2002 Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries. The BLS request includes $76.4 million and 579 FTE for the Compensation and Working Conditions program. In FY 2003, BLS will publish new measures of labor productivity and unit labor costs for 2 service-producing industries. BLS also will develop a new procedure for adjusting hours collected in the Current Employment Statistics survey from an hours-paid basis to an hours-at-work basis, and conduct a study of the family from an international perspective, including demographic trends and the work/family relationship. The BLS request includes $10.0 million and 81 FTE for the Productivity and Technology program. The BLS request also includes $28.1 million and 214 FTE for the Executive Direction program. It provides agency-wide policy and management direction, including all centralized support services in the administrative, publications, computer systems and statistical methods research areas (Daily Labor Report, page E-47). General Federal budget articles including insights on funding requests for the Department of Labor in The Washington Post (page A13), The New York Times (page A1); The Wall Street Journal (page A8).
"Surveys indicate that family and medical leave is becoming a more important part of the experience of employers and employees," according to Jane Waldfogel, writing in the "Monthly Labor Review. Waldfogel is associate professor of social work and public affairs at Columbia University School of Social Work in New York. Her findings are based on the Department of Labor's surveys of employees and businesses in 2000. "On the employer side, more establishments are offering family and medical leave policies, in many instances going beyond what is required by the Family and Medical Leave Act," she said. "Two-thirds of covered establishments are finding the act easy to administer and an even larger majority reports that the FMLA has had no adverse effects on their businesses." On the employee side, according to Waldfogel, "workers are using FMLA leave in increasing numbers and the proportion of those who say they needed leave but were not able to take it is decreasing." (Carol Kleiman, http:www.chicagotribune.com/.../chi-0202050257feb05.column?coll=chi%2Dbusine ss%2Dhe). Orders to U.S. factories rose by 1.2 percent in December, suggesting that the nation's battered manufacturing sector may see better days ahead, writes Jeannine Aversa, Associated Press, http://www.nandotimes.com/business/story/240396p-2287416c.html). The advance in factory orders reported today by the Commerce Department came after orders fell by 4.3 percent in November. Manufacturers have borne the brunt of the recession that began in March. To cope, they have sharply cut production, trimmed hours and laid off workers. Last year, factories shed 1.3 million jobs, or about 7 percent of their work force. But today's report, taken with other recent data, indicates that the worst of the recession may be over for manufacturers. The Consumer Price Index, the main gauge of inflation and a bedrock statistic of the federal government, is a surprisingly frail number. The calculations behind it are as much art as science, says Jolie Solomon, New York Times News Service (http://www.chicagotribune.com/bus.../chi-0202050133feb05.story?coll=chi%2Db usiness%2Dhed). But that is changing. Starting this year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which computes the index, is using some of the freshest data it has ever collected. It will readjust the weight, or importance, of goods and services in the index market basket, and the stores where they are sampled, far more often than it did in the past. And later in the year, the bureau, for the first time, will start an experimental index to account for something that consumers do all the time: substitute one kind of product for another--chicken instead of steak, sugar instead of honey--to save money when prices go up. Whether these changes will change the official inflation rate significantly is unclear. In the past, the bureau's market basket was based on consumer buying patterns surveyed 5, 10, or even more years earlier. The current index, for example, is based on consumer behavior in 1993-95. But the bureau is now using new "relative weights" for products and services based on consumer choices in 1999 and 2000. College costs are on the rise because schools feel the bite of a week economy, reduced revenue and their own devalued investments. In-state tuition and fees for public 4-year colleges increased an average of 7.7 percent over the past year, to $3,754, a jump from the 4 percent increases of recent years. Tuition at private colleges increased 5.5 percent, to $17,123, according to the College Board (Andrew Leckey, http://www.chicagotribune.com/bus.../chi-0202050132feb05.story?coll=chi%2Dhe d. While their parents stopped working at 65, the children are finding that they must stay on the job until their late 60's or early 70's if they want to live as well in retirement, says Louis Uchitelle, in "Economic View" (The New York Times, February 3, "Money & Business" section, page 4). The 67-year-olds were in their mid-40's when Congress, in the late 1970's, authorized tax-deferred 401(k) plans. And without their knowing it, their retirement years changed. With that legislation, the nation began a gradual shift from a private-sector pension system financed by the employer toward a system financed mainly by employees. The employer-financed pensions, combined with Social Security, produced a retirement income at age 65 equal to nearly 60 percent of a typical worker's pre-retirement pay, according to various studies. Added to Social Security, the earnings from 401(k) savings produce a typical pension, at age 65, that is less than 50 percent of pre-retirement pay. As a result, Americans are revising their retirement age. From World War II until the mid-1980's, they retired at ever younger ages. And then as 401(k) plans gained acceptance and people stayed healthy longer, the trend gradually reversed. Company-financed plans guaranteed a monthly check for the rest of a retiree's life, the 401(k)'s do not. "That is causing people to think," said Sara Rix, a policy adviser at AARP, an organization of people over 50 "that maybe if I work a couple of years longer, I'll be O.K." DUE OUT TOMORROW: Productivity and Costs-- Fourth Quarter 2001 (Preliminary)
<<application/ms-tnef>>
