BLS DAILY REPORT, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1999
U.S. employers reported a total of 1,742 mass layoff events in July,
resulting in 221,605 workers filing new claims for unemployment insurance,
according to BLS. Mass layoffs are those involving at least 50 workers from
a single establishment, according to the BLS definition. ... (Daily Labor
Report, page D-3).
Initial claims filed with state agencies for unemployment insurance benefits
decreased by 17,000 to a seasonally adjusted 272,000 in the week ended Sept.
18, the Employment and Training Administration reports. ... (Daily Labor
Report, page D-1)_____Some economists attributed much of the decline in
claims to Hurricane Floyd, saying the storm prevented unemployed people from
getting to claims offices. Many economists had predicted an increase to
290,000. ... (Washington Post, page E2)_____New claims for unemployment
insurance benefits dropped unexpectedly last week to the lowest level in a
quarter of a century. Last week was the ninth consecutive one with claims
below 300,000. Economists consider such jobless claim levels an indication
of an extremely tight labor market. ... (New York Times, page
C3)_____Despite some gloomy forecasts, Hurricane Floyd failed to flood
unemployment offices with new claims last week. ... (Wall Street Journal,
page A2).
Wage data compiled by the Bureau of National Affairs in the first 38 weeks
of 1999 for all settlements show that the weighted average increase in newly
negotiated contracts was 3.4 percent, compared with 2.9 percent in 1999.
The median first-year increase for settlements reported to date in 1999 was
3 percent, the same as for the comparable period of 1996. In the
manufacturing sector, the weighted increase was 3.5 percent, compared with
2.9 percent in 1998. ... (Daily Labor Report, page D-10).
After spiking up in the summer, job opportunities will diminish for many
workers during the final 3 months of the year, according to projections from
268 respondents to BNA's latest quarterly employment survey. Job security
appears likely to weaken this fall, particularly for production and service
employees. On the other hand, office/clerical workers may enjoy a second
straight quarter of marginal improvement in their hiring prospects, and the
overall employment outlook remains far brighter than in the first half of
the decade. ... (Daily Labor Report, page D-8).
Big raises aren't in store in the year 2000. But companies will spend 16
percent more on performance-related bonuses. That spending will total 9.6
percent of payroll next year, up from 8 percent in 1998, according to data
from Hewitt Associates (Business Week, Sept. 27, page 8).
Health maintenance organizations are sealing deals for premium increases of
as much as 15 percent, or six times the overall rate of inflation.
"Employers are experiencing sticker shock," says a William M. Mercer Inc.
spokesman. That company negotiates with 400 HMOs for clients nationwide.
Blame the hikes on rising medical costs, skyrocketing prescription-drug
expenses, hefty HMO losses -- and most assuredly, on consolidation, which
has cut down the number of HMOs bidding for corporate business and created
several behemoths that control the market. ... (Business Week, Sept. 27,
page 52).
A major factor in the nation's amazing job performance in recent decades has
been the rising educational achievement of working Americans. From 1980 to
1997, the economy added 34 million jobs filled by workers with at least some
college, even as it shed 7 million jobs filled by high school dropouts.
Meanwhile, the share of 15-to-29-year-olds with high school diplomas has
jumped from 75 percent in 1970 to 88 percent today, with two-thirds of high
school grads now college-bound. ... But the problem, claim Georges Venez,
Richard A. Krop, and the late C. Peter Rydell in a recent Rand Corp. study,
is that trends related to the shifting ethnic makeup of the nation's
population seem far less favorable. Specifically, the lagging
post-secondary school attainments of two growing minorities -- Hispanics and
blacks -- suggest that the share of Americans with college training entering
the labor market could actually start to decline within 2 decades. By 2015,
the study projects that Hispanics and blacks will account for one-third of
the school-age population (and of new entrants to the workforce), up from
one-fourth in 1990, while non-Hispanic whites will fall to 58 percent of the
total and the small but fast-rising Asian group will climb to 6.2 percent.
The biggest increase will be among Hispanics, the majority of whom are of
Mexican origin, a group with a particularly poor record of educational
attainment. Says Vernez: ... "we must still find ways to improve minority
educational preparation and demand for college" (Business Week, Sept. 27,
page 34).
Making late and patchy productivity estimates by juggling output,
employment, investment, and working-hours data is tough -- and deciding what
they mean is worse. If you believe the Organization for Economic
Cooperation & Development, productivity has grown faster in Europe than in
the U.S. for years. ... Turn to American data, however, and the reverse
appears to be true. For manufacturing productivity at least, Standard &
Poor's DRI and BLS both figure Europe has lagged the U.S. most years since
1992 -- and that U.S. hourly output is growing faster. Still, most number
crunchers seem to agree that European productivity growth sped up in the
1990s. The upswing was especially strong in 1997. ... Recent productivity
increases show that European countries are in good shape. Growth may have
been lackluster, but corporate earnings have surged 84 percent since 1994,
almost as fast as in the U.S. ... The article in Business Week (Sept. 27,
page 64) is illustrated by a graph whose source is BLS.
By most statistical measures, the past few years have felt like a return to
the good old days of the 1960s. The unemployment rate has fallen to just
over 4 percent. Inflation is nearly nonexistent, and productivity growth
has accelerated. There is, however, one big difference between today's boom
and the experience of the 1960s. Back then, it really was true that the
rising economic tide lifted everyone. No matter where you worked -- be it a
factory, school, bank, hospital, or hotel -- you saw your wages rise in the
1960s. But today, there are vast disparities in wage growth between
different parts of the economy. If you work in a "New Economy" industry
such as software, financial services, media, or consulting, you have
probably seen your earnings skyrocket in recent years. But if you work in
an "Old Economy" industry, it is more likely than not that your wages, after
adjusting for inflation, have not gone up much. ... BLS data on wages,
jobs, and productivity are cited (Business Week, Sept. 27, page 90).
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