BLS Daily Report

[Richardson_D <Richardson_D@xxxxxxx>]

BLS DAILY REPORT, TUESDAY, JULY 25, 2000

Average hourly earnings rose 3.6 percent in June, to a seasonally adjusted
$13.71, from a year ago, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says.  But by 1982
dollars, adjusting wages for inflation, earnings fell 2 cents to $7.86 (Wall
Street Journal, "Work Week" column, page A1).

The Americans with Disabilities Act is 10 years old tomorrow, but the
government still can't track employment among the disabled.  The Labor
Department [BLS] says it is hampered by definitions and lengthy survey
questions (Wall Street Journal, "Work Week" column, page A1).

__The U.S. unemployment rate is 4 percent, near a 30-year low.  For college
graduates, it is now less than 2 percent, says Ken Goldstein of the
Conference Board, who quips that "as long as you are breathing and
ambulatory, you can find a job."  With the economy registering a net gain of
about 200,000 jobs a month during this expansion, it would seem that there
aren't many good excuses for being jobless.  Yet, even a good economy spawns
a degree of so-called frictional unemployment, as workers enter the job
force for the first time or voluntarily leave one position to search for
another.  Even in the nation's burgeoning high-tech hubs, thousands of
well-educated people are out of work.  Corporate acquisitions and
restructuring take a particular toll on the highest paid and the most
experienced.  According to Challenger, Gray, and Christmas, a Chicago-based
outplacement firm, employers announced 670,000 job cuts in 1999, up from
615,000 in 1993, when the firm began keeping track.  Companies'
fast-shifting needs have decimated the professional networks of some
white-collar workers who find themselves jobless and have made others less
eager to take personal risks.  "They have to be willing to relocate, to go
into retraining, or to take a pay cut," says Jerome Watters, an economist
with the Bureau of Labor Statistics [Dallas].  "It can be very difficult."
...   (Robert Tomsho in Wall Street Journal, page A1).
__The 4 percent U.S. unemployment rate reflects the circumstances of 5.6
million people over age 16, says The Wall Street Journal (page A12).  The
largest group, by occupation, are 1.5 million people who previously held
technical, sales, or administrative support jobs.  About 1.2 million of the
unemployed are operators, fabricators, and laborers.  But the jobless pool
also includes 681,000 managers and professional specialty workers.
Education presents a different breakdown.  More than half a million of the
unemployed people 25 or older are college graduates, and close to a million
more have had some college courses.  At the other end of the spectrum, about
765,000 lack high school diplomas. To be counted by the Bureau of Labor
Statistics, people must have looked for a job during the previous 4-week
period and be available for work. ...  About 44 percent had either lost
their jobs or completed temporary jobs, while 37.5 percent were resuming
their search after being out of the job market for longer than 4 weeks.
More than 6 percent were just entering the job market.  More than 12 percent
said they had left jobs voluntarily. ...  Besides the unemployed, there are
about 3.4 million part-time workers who say they can't find full-time jobs.
The historically low jobless rate would rise to about 7.3 percent if it
included these people and so-called marginally attached workers who are no
longer searching for work on a regular basis, says Steve Hipple, an
economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Good times have failed to raise the incomes of the one-third of adults who
haven't gone beyond high school, says Louis Uchitelle in The New York Times
(July 23, "Week in Review," page 1). ...  A steady third of adults 25 and
older have only finished high school  -- and that percentage does not seem
likely to come down soon for a host of reasons. ...  Half of the nation's
jobs are classified by the Labor Department [BLS] as not requiring a college
education.  Yet for many employers, high school diplomas are simply not
enough. ...  Higher level jobs for the college educated are among the
fastest growing, the Labor Department reports -- those for computer
analysts, engineers, upper level executives, and secondary-school teachers.
But lower-paying jobs that require only high school training are also among
the fastest growing -- jobs for retail sales people, cashiers, truck
drivers, office clerks, and home health care aides.  Despite this demand,
the wages of people with only a high school diploma -- rather solid in the
days of unionized blue-collar factory work -- have fallen steadily behind
for 20 years, making college seem the only route to the $20.58 an hour that
college graduates earned, on average, last year, according to the Economic
Policy Institute.  By comparison, the high school educated averaged only
$11.83; adjusted for inflation, the earnings gap has risen nearly 70 percent
since 1980. ...  "The deterioration of unions and the minimum wage probably
explains up to one-third of the increase in the earnings gap in the past 20
years," says a labor economist with the Urban League. ...

With the jobless rate hovering near a 30-year low, employers are paying
premiums to persuade talented workers at other companies to jump ship.
Private-sector compensation costs overall rose by just 3.2 percent last
year, according to Labor Department [BLS] statistics.  Many experts,
however, say the increase in wage and benefit packages to defecting
employees was two to three times as large.  The result is that companies, in
many cases, are paying new employees substantially more than what they pay
the veterans on their own work forces.  The discrepancy can give rise to
resentment, compensation experts say, which in turn can erode morale and
undermine the work-force cohesion companies try to foster. ...  In extreme
cases, veteran workers may get angry enough to pick up and leave --
perpetuating the labor shortage that led the employer to look outside in the
first place. ...  (Yochi J. Dreazen in Wall Street Journal, page B1).

As the restaurant industry expands, adult students are turning to cooking
schools for new career possibilities, says Candy Sagon in The Washington
Post Magazine (July 23, page 28). ...  There is a smorgasbord of cooking
schools for them to choose from, many of which have opened in just the past
few years. ...  All of this growth is being driven by a healthy economy and
a restaurant industry that is generating 200,000 new jobs each year, says
the president of the National Restaurant Association.  "Restaurants employ
11 million people.  We are the largest private-sector employer in the
country.  Only the government employs more people than we do."  For those
looking for jobs, the market for skilled restaurant chefs and cooks is one
of the fastest-growing sectors in the economy, increasing by nearly 20
percent each year, according to figures from the restaurant association and
the Bureau of Labor Statistics. ...  Although some top executive chefs earn
in the six figures, the average salary range for head chefs is anywhere from
$35,000 at a small restaurant to $80,000 for larger, more upscale eateries.
Assistant chefs can earn from $23,000 to $43,000, while hourly wages for
cooks range from $6.38 to $11.32, according to the Bureau of Labor
Statistics and the National Restaurant Association. ...

A survey of 1,600 undergraduate and graduate students by WetFeet.com.Inc., a
San Francisco recruitment information service, uncovered sharply different
pay expectations between male and female student for their first job.  Young
women still have lower salary expectations than men.  The average salary
expectation for men is $55,950 a year, compared with $49,190 for women.
About 51 percent of men but only 27 percent of women expect to receive
signing bonuses, while 49 percent of men and 33 percent of women expect
annual bonuses.  Men anticipate their year-end bonuses will be an average of
$13,300, while women expect to receive $8,400.  The survey found men are
more interested in financial incentives, such as bonuses and stock options.
Women care more about job security, benefits, and a stable business model
(Wall Street Journal, page B10).

When asked, 57 percent of 1,040 Americans surveyed on behalf of American
Express Incentive Services say they'd rather be rewarded with $100 than the
day off (Wall Street Journal, "Work Week" column, page A1).

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