BLS DAILY REPORT, TUESDAY, JULY 8, 1997 The number of announced layoffs dropped 28 percent in June, compared with May, and was the lowest monthly workforce reduction total since May 1993, says a report by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. Employers announced 15,091 job cuts in June, 28 percent fewer than May's total and 62 percent less than in June 1996. Not since May 1993, when employers announced 14,086 job cuts has the number of layoffs hit this low a mark ....(Daily Labor Report, page A-5). Nursing homes are labor's new target in its promised return ....Elder care, often recognized for its low pay and hard work, is one of the fastest growing segments of the nation's labor force. But nursing homes are usually small, dispersed, and hard for labor unions to organize. About 10 percent of the 17,000 nursing homes in the U.S. are unionized. Now, there is evidence of change ....Many of the nursing home recruits are women, who are a growing percentage of the union movement. The new members work mainly as nurses' aides, cooks, launderers, and other low-wage staffers ....(Wall Street Journal, page A1). Half the workers with carpal-tunnel syndrome missed 30 or more days of work in 1995, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says (Wall Street Journal, "Work Week," page A1). The prom may be over, but for the high school class of 1997, the good times are just starting, says The Wall Street Journal (page A2). Graduating seniors looking for full-time work are facing the best job market in years. Nationally, the unemployment rate is a low 5 percent. Freshly-minted high school graduates don't have it nearly that good -- 16.8 percent of l6-19 year-olds were jobless in June. But for teens, that's not a bad figure; 23 percent of them were jobless in June 1992. National prosperity, it seems, is trickling down to the youngest workers, with employers increasingly desperate to fill the kind of entry-level slots that new, noncollege-bound grads traditionally seek ....Work is plentiful for grads with basic skills ....The wage gap between high school grads and college grads began to widen rapidly during the late 1970s with a degree bringing ever-greater wages and opportunities. In recent years, however, that wage gap has leveled off ....
