BLS DAILY REPORT, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 17, 1996 RELEASED TODAY: As the national unemployment rate declined from 6.1 to 5.6 percent, 42 states also recorded lower annual average jobless rates in 1995 than in the prior year. Only three states and the District of Columbia had higher rates, while jobless rates in five states were unchanged. Among the census regions and divisions, rates in all four regions and in eight of the nine divisions were down over the year. The East South Central division was the exception, as its rate edged up .... Doctors and nurses have increasingly had to adapt to a rapidly changing health care environment, according to a special report in the Daily Labor Report (pages 2,C-1). Physicians are more and more entering managed care arrangements, and nurses are turning to home health care, nursing homes, and clinics to fill the void of hospital downsizing. This rapid change has created insecurity in the health professions, according to organizations representing physicians and nurses. Empirical evidence suggests the change for nurses often results in lower pay checks, longer hours, and less unionization. Studies have predicted a surplus of doctors by 2000, and physicians have had to face a cost-cutting climate where entrance into a managed care organization is becoming increasingly difficult to avoid. The rapidity of the change is noteworthy, analysts have said. Although health care is in flux, BLS predicts it will continue to be among the fastest growing employment sectors during the next decade ...."Nationally, our data don't show hospital employment shrinking, but it isn't growing very rapidly," said Ronald Kutscher, an associate BLS commissioner ....BLS outlined these projections in its November Monthly Labor Review ....State and local hospital employment has been stagnating and will likely continue to do so, Kutscher said ....The employment prospects for private hospitals appear much brighter, BLS said .... Dampened by the auto industry strike, total output of the U.S. industrial sector declined 0.5 percent seasonally adjusted in March, reports the Federal Reserve Board. Discounting the GM walkout's broad impact, production grew 0.3 percent. Output of construction supplies was the strongest segment of manufacturing, and production of computers and other office equipment also remained robust ....(Daily Labor Report, page D-1; Washington Post, page F2; New York Times, page D2; Wall Street Journal, page A2; USA Today, page 1B; Washington Times, page B9). The debate in USA Today is about raising the minimum wage. In USA Today's opinion, "Higher minimum wage is fairer to workers and, states are learning, to taxpayers, too." This opinion includes the statement that "the demographics of the work force indicate that 12 million workers, three-fifths of them women and 39% sole breadwinners for their families, would benefit just from increasing the minimum to $5.15 ...." The opposing view is "raising the minimum wage is a recipe for more unemployment where America needs it least -- in inner-city neighborhoods and among the rural poor," says Bruce Josten of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Millions of Internet users have vanished without a trace since last summer. Millions more have reappeared since December. And a couple of million disappeared again just yesterday, when Nielsen Media Research revised its estimates of Internet use among adults in the United States, reports the New York Times (page D1). More than half a year after the most ambitious attempt to count the number of people using the Internet, Nielsen and its academic advisers -- looking at the same set of data -- appear to be hopelessly split on how to interpret the numbers. Depending on who -- and when -- one asks, there were 22 million adult Americans on the Internet last August. Or 19.4 million. Or 16.4 million ....And after months of a surprisingly rancorous dispute over the normally dry science of statistical weighting, the companies that commissioned the survey have come up with their own conclusion: The results of last summer's head count simply do not matter any more. The companies intend to keep on doing what they have been, pumping billions of dollars into the Internet and its World Wide Web on the assumption that, if they build it, the multitudes -- whatever the number -- will come ....Sunil Gupta, a business professor at the University of Michigan who also had access to the Nielsen raw data, said ...."Nielsen did a great job in the way they conducted the survey, but they got really sloppy at the end in how they analyzed the data. Still, whether you agree with Donna Hoffman [professor at Vanderbilt University] or with Nielsen, it is probably the best survey among all that have been done."
