[PEN-L:11232] FW: BLS Daily Report

[Richardson_D <Richardson_D@xxxxxxx>]

BLS DAILY REPORT, TUESDAY, JULY 8, 1997

The number of announced layoffs dropped 28 percent in June, compared
with May, and was the lowest monthly workforce reduction total since
May 1993, says a report by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc.
 Employers announced 15,091 job cuts in June, 28 percent fewer than
May's total and 62 percent less than in June 1996.  Not since May
1993, when employers announced 14,086 job cuts has the number of
layoffs hit this low a mark ....(Daily Labor Report, page A-5).

Nursing homes are labor's new target in its promised return ....Elder
care, often recognized for its low pay and hard work, is one of the
fastest growing segments of the nation's labor force.  But nursing
homes are usually small, dispersed, and hard for labor unions to
organize.   About 10 percent of the 17,000 nursing homes in the U.S.
are unionized.  Now, there is evidence of change ....Many of the
nursing home recruits are women, who are a growing percentage of the
union movement.  The new members work mainly as nurses' aides, cooks,
launderers, and other low-wage staffers ....(Wall Street Journal, page
A1).

Half the workers with carpal-tunnel syndrome missed 30 or more days of
work in 1995, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says (Wall Street
Journal, "Work Week," page A1).

The prom may be over, but for the high school class of 1997, the good
times are just starting, says The Wall Street Journal (page A2).
 Graduating seniors looking for full-time work are facing the best job
market in years.  Nationally, the unemployment rate is a low 5
percent.  Freshly-minted high school graduates don't have it nearly
that good -- 16.8 percent of l6-19 year-olds were jobless in June.
 But for teens, that's not a bad figure; 23 percent of them were
jobless in June 1992.  National prosperity, it seems, is trickling
down to the youngest workers, with employers increasingly desperate to
fill the kind of entry-level slots that new, noncollege-bound grads
traditionally seek ....Work is plentiful for grads with basic skills
....The wage gap between high school grads and college grads began to
widen rapidly during the late 1970s with a degree bringing
ever-greater wages and opportunities.  In recent years, however, that
wage gap has leveled off ....