[PEN-L:1207] BLS Daily Report

[Richardson_D]

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BLS DAILY REPORT, TUESDAY, AUGUST 25, 1998

Contrary to the popular belief that corporate downsizing and job-hopping
have eroded job stability, a private study and government data show that
average job tenure has changed remarkably little in recent years....
According to a recent study conducted by Watson Wyatt Worldwide, a
management consulting firm in Bethesda, Md., the average job tenure at
midsize and large companies was 13.4 years in the most recent
period--1995 to 1997--up from 12.6 years from 1990 to 1992.  The study
examined the employment records of one million workers at 59 companies
at the beginning and end of three different five-year periods--from 1990
to 1995, 1991 to 1996, and 1992 to 1997.  The study found that the
portion of workers who stayed with the same employer for at least 10
years had risen significantly--from 54 percent for 1990-92 to 57.6
percent in the most recent period.  The number of workers with 20-year
tenure also climbed, from 25.6 percent to 26.2....  Part of the reason
for rising tenure is an aging work force. The average age of employees
in the Watson Wyatt study, for example, rose to 41.9 years in the most
recent period, from 40.7 earlier in the decade....  Over a longer term,
government data also show a slight increase in median job tenure for
workers.  The median number of years that workers had spent with their
current employers rose from 3.5 years in 1983 to 3.8 years in 1996, the
most recent data available, BLS reported....  (New York Times, Aug. 23,
Business section, page 12).   

Based on the amount of work it takes to earn enough to buy a new car,
they are more affordable today than they've been at any time since 1980.
It takes only 24.7 weeks of work, at the median family income, to come
up with the cash, according to the economists at Detroit's Comerica
Bank, the folks who put together the quarterly auto affordability index.
The last time cars were so affordable was nearly two decades ago, when
it took 23.5 weeks of median family income to buy a new car.  By
comparison, it took the average factory worker two years to earn the
$850 needed to buy the first Model T in 1908....  According to a
Comerica economist, the increased affordability of new cars is a
function of rising incomes, low interest rates, and a drop in the
average price of cars....  Overall new-car prices as measured by the CPI
have declined 1.2 percent from July 1997 to July 1998.  They're dropping
because automakers--saddled with excess capacity-- are cutting prices to
protect or gain market share.  The alternative--cutting back
production--takes time and requires the overcoming of resistance by the
companies' unions....  (Frank Swoboda in Washington Post, page E1).   

Levies on employers for jobless pay keep falling.  Their average
unemployment-insurance tax will ease to $207 this year from $210 last
year, reports Laurdan Associates, Potomac, Md., employment consultants
(Wall Street Journal, "Work Week," page A1).

A federal court handed the administration a serious setback in its plans
to use a controversial statistical method to conduct the 2000 census,
declaring that the proposal to estimate a portion of the nation's
population rather than try to reach every household is illegal and
cannot be used.  The three-judge special panel ruled unanimously in
favor of the House Republicans who had challenged the Census Bureau
plan, giving them a powerful victory on an issue that has been a major
point of contention between Congress and the administration for more
than a year....  (Washington Post, page A1)_____Court voids plan to use
sampling for 2000 census; a head count is mandatory.  The court blocks
effort to address 1990 flaws.  House seats and money to cities are at
stake....  (New York Times, page A1)_____Panel rules against sampling
for census.  Democrats plan appeal to the Supreme Court....  (Wall
Street Journal, page A2).

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