> BLS DAILY REPORT, MONDAY, MAY 24, 1999
>
> The Midwest in April had the lowest unemployment rate of any region in the
> country at 3.4 percent, while the West had the highest at 5.1 percent. In
> the South, the April jobless rate was 4.1 percent, and in the Northeast it
> was 4.2 percent, BLS reports. ... (Daily Labor Report, page D-1).
>
> Although expanding the scope of prison labor could cut recidivism rates,
> it would likely hurt some low-skilled civilian workers at the bottom level
> of the economy, according to economists at a symposium on inmate labor. A
> much larger proportion of the prison population than the overall U.S.
> labor force lacks a high school diploma and would only be qualified for
> low-skilled jobs, says Alan B. Krueger, a Princeton University professor.
> ... A large increase in the proportion of prison inmates working for the
> private sector would depress wages for unskilled workers by about 5
> percent, Krueger says, at the Economics of Inmate Labor Force
> Participation symposium held at George Washington University, Washington,
> D.C. ... (Daily Labor Report, page A-4).
>
> A region's ability to entice new workers and keep them by offering
> innovative pay incentives could be the key to its sustained growth in the
> face of severe labor scarcity, analysts say in an annual regional outlook
> on labor markets. Most U.S. regions expect strong job growth without
> undue wage pressures as employers test various new approaches to recruit
> and retain workers. ... Worker shortages have already cut the rate of
> expansion in the Midwest and New England. But businesses, unwilling or
> unable to offer wage increases typical in this environment, have developed
> new ways to compensate workers, often with bonuses tied to a firm's
> performance. Productivity gains also help to offset inflationary factors.
> ... (Special Report, Daily Labor Report).
>
> Job opportunities should abound in the third quarter, as strong demand for
> workers continues, according to a Manpower Inc. economic outlook survey.
> The survey of more than 15,000 U.S. companies by the staffing services
> firm found that 32 percent have plans for hiring in the third quarter, 6
> percent expect decreases to payrolls, 58 percent foresee no change, and 4
> percent are uncertain. ... (Daily Labor Report, page A-3)_____The figures
> were almost identical to the year-earlier numbers and up slightly from the
> April-to-June period, when 29 percent of the companies surveyed said they
> planned to increase their staffs. ... (Washington Post, page
> A2)_____Manpower's president says that the U.S. remains "in a protracted
> period of opportunity for workers of nearly all types." ... (Wall Street
> Journal, page A4).
>
> Forecasters surveyed quarterly by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia
> expect the economy to grow faster this year than they did previously, but
> they don't expect inflation to be any worse this year. The median of the
> 37 forecasts is for the U.S. economy to expand at an annual rate of 3.2
> percent in the current quarter, 2.8 percent in the third quarter, and 2.7
> percent in the fourth; 3 months ago, they had predicted inflationary
> adjusted growth rates of 2.7 percent, 1.9 percent, and 2.4 percent,
> respectively. After a hiccup in consumer prices in the current quarter
> because of higher oil prices, the economists expect consumer price
> inflation to calm to a 2.1 percent pace in 1999 and rise slightly to 2.3
> percent in 2000, the same as they did in a February survey. Over the next
> decade, the forecasters expect 2.5 percent annual increases in the CPI.
> But the Philadelphia Fed cautioned that two-thirds of the new forecasts
> were received before BLS reported a surprisingly sharp increase in the CPI
> in April. ... (Wall Street Journal, page A2).
>
> Like many business problems, the labor squeeze has been worse, overall,
> for small companies. Basically, that's because they long have trailed
> their bigger cousins in pay, benefits, job security, and other criteria
> that lead workers to choose one company over another. ... U.S.
> unemployment peaked this decade at 8.1 percent in January 1992, at the end
> of the recession. As the ensuing economic recovery caught steam,
> joblessness slid rapidly to an average of 5.6 percent for 1995, according
> to BLS. By 1997, the rate had dropped below 5 percent, the floor that
> economists used to call "full employment." Last year, unemployment
> continued to nudge down stubbornly, finishing at an average of 4.5 percent
> and this year it has fallen even further, to 4.2 percent. ... This has
> pulled people into the work force seemingly out of thin air. Immigrants,
> early retirees, moonlighters, the chronically unemployed -- all of them
> continue to go to work in massive numbers, baffling economists and filling
> a great many of the new jobs. ... (Wall Street Journal in a special
> supplement on Small Business, page R28).
>
> Less than 4 percent of union workers were uninsured for health care in
> 1996, compared with more than 18 percent of nonunion workers, according to
> an analysis by the Employee Benefit Research Institute. The analysis was
> based on an examination of the Census Bureau's March 1996 Survey of Income
> and Program Participation (SIPP). EBRI is a private, nonprofit,
> nonpartisan public policy research organization. ... (Daily Labor Report,
> page A-12).
>
> DUE OUT TOMORROW: Employment Characteristics of Families in 1998
>
>
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