> BLS DAILY REPORT, THURSDAY, MAY 11, 2000:
>
> RELEASED TODAY: U.S. Import and Export Price Indexes -- April 2000,
> indicates that the U.S. Import Price Index decreased 1.6 percent in April.
> The decrease, the first since June 1999, was attributable to a large
> downturn in petroleum prices. Export prices also fell in April, down 0.1
> percent, after increasing 0.5 percent in each of the previous 2 months.
>
> U.S. employers laid off 106,748 workers in 986 mass layoff actions in
> March, BLS reports. "Although the number of layoff events and initial
> claimants for unemployment insurance were the highest for March since
> March 1996, this was due in part to a calendar effect," BLS said. "This
> year, 5 weeks were reported in March versus 4 weeks in 1996-99." The total
> number of laid off workers during January through March of this year, at
> 433,968, was the highest since BLS began collecting this data in 1995
> (Daily Labor Report, page D-1).
>
> Top executives of many of the largest U.S. companies said they expect
> inflation to accelerate this year as labor markets remain tight across the
> country. Gathering in White Sulphur Springs, W. Va. for their spring
> meeting, members of the Business Council released their latest economic
> forecast, which included projections of only a modest slowdown in overall
> economic growth from its current vigorous rate, by the end of this year
> (Daily Labor Report, page A-17).
> __A majority of chief executives from giant companies like General
> Electric Co. and Microsoft Corp. expect economic growth to slow and
> inflation to worsen this year, as businesses struggle with the impact of
> rising interest rates and one of the tightest job markets in American
> history. Most of the business leaders believe long term inflation will
> hover between 2 and 3.9 percent, although more than a third said they were
> leaning toward the high end of that spectrum. The tight labor market has
> prompted many of the companies to raise wages to retain employees, and few
> of the executives expect conditions to ease this year (The Wall Street
> Journal, page A2)..
>
> Understanding and measuring electronic commerce for U.S. statistics is a
> new challenge for federal statistical agencies, BLS Associate Commissioner
> Deborah Klein told the agency's Business Research Advisory Council May 10.
> Klein, who heads BLS's office of publications and special studies, said
> like other dynamic areas of the economy, e-commerce is difficult to
> capture and quantify. However, its impact on the economy is currently
> quite small. An example, Klein said, is a Commerce Department estimate
> that e-commerce made up only 0.64 percent of retail sales in 1999.
> "People are surprised how small," Klein said. But Klein added that retail
> sales are only part of the scope of e-commerce. The data series doesn't
> capture, for example, online travel or brokerage services. In a BLS
> research paper, "E-Commerce and Government Statistics," Marilyn E. Manser,
> of the agency's office of productivity and technology, says the small size
> of e-commerce means "our current understanding of the economy is not
> likely to be significantly affected by any problems that may exist " in
> measuring these transactions. The Census Bureau has proposed a definition
> of e-commerce: "Electronic commerce (e-commerce) is any transaction
> completed over a computer-mediated network that involves the transfer of
> ownership or rights to use goods and services." BLS Commissioner
> Katharine Abraham told the advisory council about the agency's fiscal 2001
> budget request for funding for a new time-use survey. The survey, Abraham
> said, would be similar to data series common in Europe but never attempted
> by the U.S. Abraham said this series would include time spent raising
> children and taking care of sick or elderly family members. Women's groups
> have pushed for the proposed survey, but the potential audience is much
> broader, Abraham said. Abraham said the first meeting of the Federal
> Economic Statistics Advisory Committee will likely take place June 15.
> The newly created panel will bring together the three main federal
> agencies, BLS, Bureau of Economic Analysis, and the Census Bureau -- to
> work on measurement and conceptual issues that cut across agency
> boundaries (Daily Labor Report, page A-13).
>
> As recently as 1989, the federal government employed more than 316,000
> workers whose jobs were predominantly clerical. They accounted for almost
> 1 in 7 federal workers, says Michael A. Fletcher in The Washington Post
> "Federal Page" (page A33). But sweeping changes in information technology
> -- the ubiquity of voice mail, e-mail, the personal computer and more --
> have not only reduced the government's need for secretaries and clerks,
> but also changed the nature of their work. The number of federal workers
> doing mostly clerical tasks has been reduced by more than half. They now
> account for 139,000, or about 1 in 13, of the federal government's 1.8
> million employees, according to the most recent government statistics.
>
> In 1964, 43 percent of American men aged 65 to 69 worked. By 1985, only
> one in four were working -- a decline of almost 40 percent in a mere 2
> decades. During this same short period, the employment rate for men in
> the next age group down -- 60 to 64 -- plummeted by nearly a third, from
> 79 to 55 percent. Many older people, by choice or by circumstances,
> seemed to have decided that work was for the young. But in the mid-1980s
> these trends stopped. The percentage of men in their sixties who were
> working began to stabilize and then to increase. The same was true for
> women. The era of earlier and earlier retirement appears to be over.
> There are many reasons for this change. Mandatory retirement has been
> eliminated, and the restrictions on the amount Social Security recipients
> can earn without losing benefits has been eased and will be eliminated for
> those aged 65 to 69. The economy has been strong, increasing the demand
> for all types of workers. In addition, new generations of older people
> are approaching aging and retirement in new and exciting ways (Scott A.
> Bass, dean of the graduate school and distinguished professor of sociology
> at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and Joseph F. Quinn, dean
> of the College of Arts and Sciences and professor of economics at Boston
> University, in The Washington Post, op. ed. page, page A35).
>
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