BLS Daily Report

[Richardson_D <Richardson_D@xxxxxxx>]

> BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS, DAILY REPORT, TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2001:
>
> RELEASED TODAY:  A total of 148.6 million persons worked at some point
> during 2000, an increase of about 1 million persons from the prior year,
> according to the annual survey of work experience released by the Bureau
> of Labor Statistics.  The number of individuals who experience some
> unemployment during the year continued to decline.  About 12.3 million
> individuals were in this category in 2000, down about 800,000 from 1999.
> These data are from the March 2001 supplement to the Current Population
> Survey (CPS), a monthly survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau for the
> Bureau of Labor Statistics.
>
> Local government jobs rose 2.2 percent to 13.5 million in October from
> September, says the Bureau of Labor Statistics (The Wall Street Journal,
> "Work Week" feature, page 1).
>
> U.S. companies in October announced 242,192 job cuts, according to the
> outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which attributed the high
> number to the September 11 attacks. October was the second highest month
> for job cuts this year, following September.  October 2001 job cuts were
> 453 percent higher than in October 2000, when 43,799 job cuts were
> announced. So far this year, 1.6 million jobs have been eliminated, 1
> million more than in all of 2000, Challenger said. The Chicago-based firm
> said 442,999 or 90 percent of the September and October job cuts occurred
> after September 11.  The telecommunications industry was the hardest hit
> in October, with 42,347 layoffs.  So far this year, 266,578 job cuts have
> been announced in the industry, according to the report (Daily Labor
> Report, page A-1).
>
> The terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center may have been trying to
> crush American capitalism and its masters of the universe on Wall Street.
> But the economic impact of the attack is felling a very different group of
> people:  cooks, cabdrivers, sales clerks and seamstresses.  Workers in
> traditionally low-wage industries, like restaurants and hotels, retailing
> and transportation, have been hit hard in the fallout from September 11,
> according to a new analysis from the New York State Department of Labor.
> And a report released yesterday by the labor-backed Fiscal Policy
> Institute forecasts that almost 80,000 people will have lost their jobs by
> the end of the year and that 60 percent of these positions paid an average
> of $23,000 a year.  That is far below the citywide average salary of
> roughly $58,000.  "The spillover effects hit the retail and service
> industries very hard in New York City, says James Parrott, the chief
> economist for the Institute.  "And those tend to be lower-wage jobs (The
> New York Times, page B1).
>
> In 2002, key industries must face their unions, says The Wall Street
> Journal in its "Work Week" feature (page 1). "Next year is going to be a
> big bargaining year," says Richard Bank, director of the AFL-CIO center
> for collective bargaining.
>
> Business activity in the services sector dropped 9.6 percentage points in
> October, to a record low 40.6 percent from 50.2 percent in September, the
> National Association of Purchasing Management reports.  Only health
> services showed increased business activity in October (Daily Labor
> Report, page A-6).
>
> The U.S. service sector contracted sharply during October, showing more
> weakness than expected (The Wall Street Journal, page A8).
>
> The depth and breadth of the slump in the technology sector is greater
> than past downturns, and has abruptly transformed the technology industry
> in the West, to a drag on the region's economy from an engine of growth,
> according to an analysis of the San Francisco Federal Reserve. The
> analysis by San Francisco Fed Senior Economist Mary Daly, notes that not
> only is the slump in high technology manufacturing the deepest in more
> than a decade, but for the first time since at least 1990, it also
> coincides with a slide in the technology-services sector, which includes
> software and Internet companies (The Wall Street Journal, page A2).
>
> High-tech's economic clout is nearly 2 times greater in the western United
> States than in the rest of the country, according to a Federal Reserve
> report.  High-tech paychecks cover 14.6 percent of the nonfarm wages in
> the nine Western states that comprise the Fed's western district, compared
> to 7.5 percent in the rest of the country, the report said.  The
> industry's impact on jobs in the West isn't as dramatic.  High-tech
> employers account for 6 percent of the jobs in the Western states,
> slightly above the 4 percent rate outside the region.  High-tech packs the
> biggest payroll punch in California, home to the Silicon Valley, and
> Washington state, home to Microsoft.  High-tech accounts for 17 percent of
> the nonfarm wages in California and 16 percent in Washington, the report
> said. (Associated Press,
> http://www0.mercurycenter.com/business/tops/009969.htm).
>
> Across the country, businesses in the security, defense, pharmaceutical
> and certain other industries have maintained or expanded their hiring
> during the past 8 weeks.  But with unemployment now at a 5-year high, many
> of these employers face the conundrum of a mismatch between their openings
> and the growing pool of eager takers (The Wall Street Journal, page B1).
>
> This year the Labor Department counted 14,405 so-called mass layoffs, each
> involving 50 or more workers, for a total of 1.7 million filing claims for
> unemployment benefits.  That's up about 45 percent from a year earlier.
> During that same period, smaller firms, it appeared from anecdotal
> evidence, weren't putting quite so many people out of work. That's because
> privately held smaller companies don't have public stockholders and Wall
> Street analysts clamoring for cost cuts at the first sign of a slowdown.
> This appears to be changing, however, and accelerating  layoffs at smaller
> employers could lead to a deeper and longer recession.  The Labor
> Department doesn't categorize layoffs according to size of business.  But
> two big payroll-processing companies, each handling hundreds of thousands
> of mostly smaller firms' paychecks, have in recent weeks seen relatively
> sharp declines in employment levels at their clients. That, coupled with
> Friday's increase in the national employment rate to 5.4 percent in
> October from 4.9 percent in September is troubling news for the economy
> (The Wall Street Journal, page B2).
>
> DUE OUT TOMORROW:  Productivity and Costs -- Third Quarter 2001
> (Preliminary).
>

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