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> BLS DAILY REPORT, MONDAY, JANUARY 26, 1998
>
> In October, there were 1,362 mass layoff events in U.S. workplaces
> that involved 134,742 workers, BLS reports. Mass layoffs are those
> involving 50 or more workers from a single business or establishment
> who filed new claims for unemployment insurance benefits. Drawing
> from these UI databases, BLS finds that the number of layoff events in
> October was a little higher than the number of events in October 1996.
> However, the number of employees involved in layoffs was comparable.
> Manufacturing industries accounted for 27 percent of all mass layoff
> events and 33 percent of all initial claims filed in October
> ....(Daily Labor Report, page D-1).
>
> In a "commentary" article (Washington Times) on the minimum wage,
> "Marginal Workers, Minimized Jobs," Bruce Bartlett, syndicated
> columnist, discusses the unemployment rate for black teenage males and
> says - "All of these data are available from the Bureau of Labor
> Statistics at http://stats.bls.gov".
>
> Merit pay raises will range from 4.1 percent for low-level workers to
> 4.3 percent for top-level executives this year, according to a survey
> of 1,600 companies with 10 million employees. William M. Mercer Inc.,
> a benefits and compensation consulting company, conducted the survey
> ....(Washington Post, Jan. 25, page H4).
>
> What working couples - both men and women - want most from their
> employers these days are flexible hours that allow them to handle
> doctors' appointments, home repairs, classes, and parent-teacher
> conferences, according to a study conducted by Catalyst, a nonprofit
> business research organization that focuses on corporate efforts to
> promote women ....(Washington Post, Jan. 25, page H4).
>
> U.S. firms may lose labor-cost advantage, says "The Outlook" column
> (Wall Street Journal, page A1). During most of the 1990s, U.S.
> manufacturers have cashed in on a great bargain: the American worker.
> U.S. factory wages and benefits have remained low, compared with those
> in many other industrialized countries. And companies have turned
> that edge into growing global market share and solid profits.
> Recently, however, several factors have combined to reduce that
> labor-cost advantage. Even though wages, especially for less-skilled
> jobs, are rising slowly, American workers are rapidly becoming pricier
> compared with those abroad ....At least three factors are helping
> change the global competitive landscape. The most obvious is the
> rising dollar ....Secondly, with U.S. unemployment at just 4.7
> percent, actual wages are starting to creep up. Benefit costs, which
> have been restrained, could soon begin to climb ....Lastly, foreign
> companies are starting to adopt some of the cost-cutting tactics that
> U.S. companies introduced earlier in the decade ....Hourly
> compensation costs for factory workers in different countries are
> shown in a table and credited to BLS.
>
> Nearly 1.1 million jobs would be lost from the U.S. workforce over the
> next two years if the Asian economic crisis causes the nation's
> foreign trade deficit to balloon an additional $100 billion, the
> Economic Policy Institute said in a report ....The report was based on
> final 1995 demand data from the BLS 183-categorization of the U.S.
> economy ....(Daily Labor Report, page A-4).
>
> DUE OUT TOMORROW: Employment Cost Index - December 1997
>
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