[PEN-L:3830] FW: BLS Daily Report

[Richardson_D <RichardD@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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."