BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS, DAILY REPORT, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 6, 2002: RELEASED TODAY: In January, most regional and state unemployment rates either declined or were little changed over the month, but were higher than a year earlier, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. The national jobless rate decreased to 5.6 percent in January. Nonfarm employment increased in 30 states. (Employment and unemployment data for Michigan, and therefore the East North Central division and the Midwest region, were not available at the time of release).
Several state legislatures approved major changes in workers' compensation laws during 2001, including coverage of security personnel in the recent Winter Olympic games, according to an article in the Bureau of Labor Statistics' January "Monthly Labor Review". BLS economist Glenn Whittington describes state coverage changes, as well as increases in some benefits levels. The article provides a state-by-state summary of last year's significant changes in workers' compensation laws (Daily Labor Report, page A-2; article in E-1). William C. Barron, acting director of the U.S. Census Bureau, will retire this summer after 34 years as a federal employee to accept a one-year appointment as a professor at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Most of his career was spent at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and for 15 years Barron was deputy commissioner of labor statistics. In 1998, Barron, 56, left BLS to become deputy undersecretary of commerce to oversee planning and budgeting for the 2000 Census. He became deputy director of the Census Bureau in May 1999 and then acting director when Kenneth Prewitt resigned in January 2001. (The Washington Post, page A17). Orders to U.S. factories rose by 1.6 percent in January, lifted by stronger demand for cars, computers and machinery, providing new evidence that the battered manufacturing sector is turning a corner. The advance followed a 0.7 percent rise in December and was the third increase in the last 4 months, the Commerce Department reported today. A host of recent economic reports has indicted the recession, which began in March 2001, has probably ended and will be recorded as one of the mildest in U.S. history (Jeannine Aversa, Associated Press, http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-020406econ.story). If you were one of the 7.9 million Americans looking for work in January, there's probably very little doubt in your mind that the economy was -- or at least had been -- in a recession. But for the 141.4 million who never lost their jobs, this recession may have come and gone so quickly that they didn't even notice (Jeannine Aversa, Associated Press, http://www.nandotimes.com/business/story/286012p-2561158c.html). "If this recession has now ended -- as most economists, including Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan apparently think -- then there will be a supreme irony in its passing. What has transfixed Americans these past few years has been the so-called New Economy, with its dazzling technologies, its visions of instant riches, and its astronomical stock market valuations," writes Robert J. Samuelson in The Washington Post (page A19). But spending on housing, automobiles, furniture, toys, fast food, physicians and dentists -- almost every thing that is routine and unrevolutionary -- has rescued the economy from the collapsed investment in telecom networks and dot-com and from the depressing effects of fallen stock prices. Samuelson quotes Susan Sterne of Economic Analysis Associates as saying "this consumer recession was almost entirely a travel recession" -- terrorism's aftershock. Luggage sales declined 2.1 percent; hotel and motel spending was down 12.7 percent. Greenspan said he expected any recovery to be "subdued". New York City lost far more jobs last year than anyone (except maybe the unemployed) realized: almost 36,000 more than the state's original estimate of 96,500, according to a new tally released yesterday by the State Department of Labor. The new data, which have been revised to reflect information from corporate unemployment tax filings, show that the city lost 132,400 jobs last year, up by one-third from the Labor Department's original estimate. The drop is the steepest since 1991, which was the worse year of the recession that lasted from 1989 through 1992. Most of the loss reflects the economic aftershocks of the attack on the World Trade Center. But the new data also show that the national recession hit New York's services sector slightly earlier, and a lot harder, than economists realized. But there were some bright spots in the data. For one thing, the number of jobs on Wall Street last year was revised upward by 10,000, to 175,500 (The New York Times, page A21). With corporate profits and many stock prices down, pay for the chief executives of large companies fell slightly last year, according to a survey by Pearl Meyer & Partners, an executive compensation consulting firm in New York. On average, the chief executives of the companies surveyed received total compensation of $10.46 million in 2001, down 4 percent from 2000, as declines in bonuses and the value of stock option grants outweighed increases in salary and incentive payments other than stock options. The overall drop was the second in the survey's 18-year history and the first since 1993 (The New York Times, page C9). Existing-home sales increased briskly in most regions in the fourth quarter of 2001, even compared with strong sales a year earlier, thanks to low mortgage rates for buyers and unseasonably warm weather for builders. East South Central and Great Lakes states showed the biggest gains as their stabilizing manufacturing sectors prompted workers to go ahead with delayed home-buying plans. Similarly, sales in Rocky Mountain states were boosted by workers' confidence in some of their dominant industries, such as New Mexico's defense contractors. But sales were sluggish at best in economies more tied to the information-technology sector, notably Pacific and New England states that were overbuilt with expensive homes prior to the industry's meltdown in 2000 (The Wall Street Journal, page B5). DUE OUT TOMORROW: Productivity and Costs -- Fourth Quarter 2001 (revised)
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