BLS DAILY REPORT, THURSDAY, JANUARY 30, 1997 RELEASED TODAY: Among men, median tenure with their current employer fell between 1983 and 1996 in nearly every age group. The overall median for men remained flat at 4.0 years, however, as the age distribution of employed men shifted to older age groups, where workers have longer tenure. Median tenure for women had changed little from 1983 to 1991, but was up slightly in 1996 to 3.5 years ....[See Note at end of next item.] An analysis of recent government data by the Employee Benefit Research Institute provides important new evidence that structural shifts in the U.S. economy and a rising tide of permanent layoffs have significantly increased job mobility. The EBRI analysis points to a sharp decline in male job stability in recent years ....But females' job tenure, which rose in the early 1980s, has remained relatively constant since 1983. The greater stability posted by women may be related to the surge in women working since the mid-70s and the heavier toll among men of recent job losses ....While rising mobility may entail hardship for individual workers, many economists believe that it has contributed to employment and economic growth in recent years ....However, mobility caused by layoffs can have negative implications for the economic security of affected workers -- and for long-term national savings ....(Business Week, Jan. 17, page 20)_____NOTE: The EBRI study used the data base for employee tenure released today by BLS, but did not include the revisions for medians for 1983-91 that BLS incorporated in its release. The method used to compute median tenure was improved for the February 1996 data. To facilitate historical comparison, previously published medians for 1983-91 were recalculated by BLS using the new method .... The Social Security Advisory Council came under fire Jan. 29 at a Senate Budget Committee hearing for not addressing whether the CPI is overstated and whether it should be adjusted as part of any plans formulated to address the Social Security system's future insolvency ....Saying that two-thirds of the Social Security imbalance would be taken care of by making such an adjustment, Senate Budget Committee member Kent Conrad (D-ND) wanted to know why the Social Security Advisory Council did not address the CPI issue. "The council did deal with that issue and -- in one of our important areas of agreement -- we decided we would like to leave the determinations of the inflation adjustment up to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and keep it out of politics," Edward Gramlich, chairman of the Social Security Advisory Council, said ....Even if the method advocated by Conrad were to be used, Gramlich said that at least two-thirds of the Social Security financial problem would still have to be solved ....(Daily Labor Report, page A-10). Wage gains remained moderate last year, with the all-industries median first-year wage increase under contracts negotiated in 1996 coming in at 3 percent, which was identical to the 1995 advance, according to data compiled by BNA. Second and third-year median wage increases also were unchanged at 3 percent ....(Daily Labor Report, pages 1,D-6,D-10). The Commerce Department says new orders to factories for durable goods declined 1.7 percent in December, marking the seventh monthly drop for the year, due chiefly to a drop in communications equipment ....(Daily Labor Report, page D-1)_____The unexpected decline held the 1996 gain to the smallest in three years and was led by a plunge in orders for electronic and other electrical equipment such as circuit boards (Washington Post, page D1)_____The decline indicated that economic growth could be more restrained than many analysts believe ....(New York Times, page D4; Wall Street Journal, page A2). _____The American Electronics Association reports employment in high-tech industries, especially services, has expanded at a robust pace in many states, bringing total payrolls in the sector to 4 million as of 1995, according to its report "Cyberstates: A State-by-State Overview of the High-Technology Industries." High-tech jobs in the United States are about evenly split between manufacturing and services, the trade group said. The 1.9 million manufacturing workers in the industry outnumber auto industry workers, the AEA said ....The report provides much more state-level detail than previously available, drawing on data from BLS, the group said ....Salaries at high-tech firms tend to be considerably higher than among other industries, the report said ....(Daily Labor Report, page A-10). As the Federal Government hands more of its research to private contractors and science is run increasingly as a business, a growing number of laboratories are saving money and hassles by hiring scientist-temps, says a Washington Post article (page A1). In a quiet revolution little noted outside the research community, these contingency workers -- many of them with PhDs or other advanced degrees -- are changing the way science gets done in this country. Industry advocates say the low-overhead scientists are helping U.S. laboratories stay competitive. But critics fear that the gradual replacement of career scientists with short-term temps may undermine the continuity of research that has helped fuel the nation's global scientific lead ....The temporary scientist business is growing even faster than the burgeoning temporary employment market over all, industry statistics show. Pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies are leading the trend, along with companies that test for environmental contaminants ....They are still a small fraction of the nation's scientists over all; contingency workers constitute only about 2 percent of the U.S. work force. But professional and technical workers, including scientists, account for about one in six of the temporary workers in this country, and global trends are nourishing those numbers fast .... Hispanic households struggle as the poorest of the poor in the U.S., says a New York Times article (page A1). Census Bureau data shows that, in 1995, the median household income rose for every other American ethnic and racial group, but, for the nation's 27 million Hispanics, it dropped 5.1 percent. The downturn, which affects the American-born as well as the newly arrived across a broad spectrum of socio-economic indicators, has baffled social scientists. And it has prompted some to warn that many Hispanics, members of the nation's fastest growing ethnic or racial group, may become entrenched as America's working poor .... DUE OUT TOMORROW: Union Members in 1996
