BLS Daily Report

[Richardson_D <Richardson_D@xxxxxxx>]

BLS DAILY REPORT, THURSDAY, JUNE 29, 2000:

RELEASED TODAY:  "Employer Costs for Employee Compensation - March 2000"
indicates that in March 2000, employer costs for employee compensation for
civilian workers (private industry and State and local government) in the
United States average $21.16 per hour worked..  Wages and salaries, which
averaged $15.36, accounted for approximately 73 percent of these costs,
while benefits, which averaged $5.80, accounted for the remaining 27
percent.

Services industries -- from personal services to health and business
services -- created more than half of all new jobs produced by U.S. private
businesses, excluding agriculture, during the period from 1992 through 1997,
according to figures scheduled for release today by the Census Bureau.
Census said that services industries created a total of 6.4 million new jobs
during that 5-year period, with total employment in the sector rising to 34
million.  The increase in total services jobs represented a 24.4 percent
gain over the period.  Figures are available by industry and by state for
the period, based on the agency's 1997 "Economic Census".  Every 5 years,
Census conducts a broad survey of U.S. industries to determine not only
employment levels, but also receipts and other information.  Census said
that most of the growth in services jobs during that period was among
establishment subject to federal income tax, while tax-exempt service
establishments (including hospitals) grew at a slower rate.  For the first
time since completion of the North American Industrial Classification
System, Census made the "Economic Census" data available both on the North
American Industrial Classification System basis, and on the old Standard
Industrial Classification basis.  A Census analyst says NAICS provides some
new industry categories (including casinos), as it updates the
classification system to reflect changes in the economy (Daily Labor Report,
page A-11; The Washington Post, page E17)..

The long economic boom has pushed unemployment to its lowest level in
decades, but more jobs don't necessarily mean higher living standards.  A
new report shows that an American holding a full-time job in the late 1990s
was still as likely to fall below the official poverty line as a similar
worker in the 1980s, and more likely to do so than a full-time worker in the
1970s.  "Working full-time and year-round is for more and more Americans,
not enough," the Conference Board asserts in a study entitled "Does a Rising
Tide Lift All Boats?"  "This is not the outcome one would expect from the
longest economic expansion in economic history," adds the report to be
released today by the New York-based nonprofit business research center.
Some economists said the Conference Board report was flawed because, in
using official government definition of poverty, it ignores the impact of
the earned income tax credit for low-income workers, a program that was
significantly expanded in the 1990s.  But others said the study still
highlights an important point often lost amid the celebratory hype about the
current boom: Lower-skilled workers have profited much less than others, and
have yet to recover from the sharp erosion of earnings from the mid-1970s
through the mid-1990s.  Conference Board researchers, using unpublished
Census data, found that the poverty rate for full-time workers stayed almost
constant over the past 20 years, with rates hovering between 2.4 and 3.1
percent in the 1980s.  That conclusion tempers other data suggesting that
lower-income families fared better in the 1990s than in the 1980s (The Wall
Street Journal, page A12).
Data compiled by the Bureau of National Affairs in the first 26 weeks of
2000 for all settlements show a weighted average first-year increase of 3.9
percent in newly negotiated contracts, compared with 2.7 percent in the same
period in 1999.  Manufacturing contracts provided a weighted average
increase of 3.4 percent, compared with 3.1 percent in 1999.  Excluding
construction contracts, the nonmanufacturing industry weighted average
increase was 4.1 percent, compared with 2.5 percent a year earlier (Daily
Labor Report, page D-1).

Federal Reserve policymakers chose yesterday to leave their target for
overnight interest rates unchanged while waiting for more evidence about how
much U.S. economic growth is slowing, but they cautioned that more rate
increases may lie ahead (John M. Berry in The Washington Post, page E1; The
New York Times, page C1).
__The Federal Reserve paused in its yearlong campaign to raise interest
rates, but issued a blunt warning that it could resume efforts to slow the
economy if growth rebounds this summer (The Wall Street Journal, page A2).

E-mail is reducing the need for mail carriers, fax machines and even
telephones in offices world-wide, according to a new survey that shows how
e-mail is transforming the workplace.  Among the more than 1,000 employees
polled in May, 80 percent said e-mail has replaced "snail mail" for the
majority of their business correspondence, 72.5 percent said it has replaced
faxing and 45 percent said it has replaced phone calls. The study, called
"E-mail Behavior in the Workplace," was conducted by Vault.com. a Web site
for career and human resources information.  The survey detailed e-mail
practices and attitudes by asking questions about monitoring worries,
requesting a raise and communicating with one's boss.  Among those surveyed,
42 percent said they worried about employers monitoring their e-mail and 79
percent said they used a separate account such as Hotmail or Yahoo for
personal correspondence (The Washington Post, page E7).

The value of new construction contracts eased 3 percent in May, as higher
interest rates depressed demand for residential and nonresidential building
(The Wall Street Journal, page B2).

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