> BLS DAILY REPORT, FRIDAY, MAY 19, 2000:
>
> RELEASED TODAY: "Regional and State Employment and Unemployment: April
> 2000" indicates that regional and state unemployment rates were relatively
> stable in April. All four regions registered little change over the
> month, and 41 states and the District of Columbia recorded shifts of 0.3
> percentage point or less, BLS reports. The national jobless rate edged
> down to 3.9 percent. Nonfarm employment incrased in 38 states in April.
>
> New claims filed with state agencies for unemployment insurance benefits
> declined by 21,000 to a seasonally adjusted level of 276,000 during the
> week ended May 13, according to figures from the Employment and Training
> Administration of the Department of Labor. This latest report was widely
> interpreted as confirmation that the strong demand for workers helps newly
> laid-off workers to find new jobs in a relatively short time. With the
> exception of a week in late April, the level of initial claims has been
> below the 300,000 mark since mid-February (Daily Labor Report, page D-1).
> __New claims for unemployment benefits fell last week for the second
> consecutive week, leaving claims at a level suggesting that businesses are
> scrambling to find workers The decline was sharper than many analysts were
> expecting. They were forecasting that claims would fall to 295,000 (The
> Associated Press in The New York Times, page C2).
> __The Labor Department said that new claims for jobless benefits fell
> again last week, though a longer-term measure rose to one of its highest
> levels of the year. The 4-week moving average of claims, which many
> analysts prefer because it smoothes out short-term fluctuations, inched up
> to 289,750 last week, its highest level mid-January. The gauge has been
> below 300,000 since October (The Wall Street Journal, page A6).
>
> The Federal Government is taking steps to improve training for its
> employees, but more strategic planning is needed to keep up with the best
> practices of the private sector, witnesses tell the Senate Governmental
> Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, Restructuring,
> and the District of Columbia. Sen. George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio), chairman
> of the subcommittee, said he was surprised to discover that most federal
> agencies do not have formal training budgets. Instead, he said, training
> money is dispersed throughout agency budgets in "operations" or
> "administration" accounts. "It takes a great deal of effort on behalf of
> an agency to pull this information together from the different parts of
> the budget to present a complete picture of training activities," he said.
> Almost all of the agencies said their employee training budgets were
> inadequate and that they could use additional training funds (Daily Labor
> Report, page A-8).
>
> A growing pool of high-technology Philippine talent that is attractive to
> employers in Europe and the United States, and is increasingly drawing
> multinationals like Trend Micro, America Online, and Motorola to move some
> of their operations to the Philippine Islands. That same
> computer-literate population is now feeding a surprisingly lively Internet
> start-up scene, in a country where many annual incomes are typically
> around $1,000 and less than 1 percent of the population use Internet.
> "The Philippines may be a poor country, but part of it is English-speaking
> and educated," said Fernando d. Contreras, vice president-elect of the
> Philippine Internet Service Organization. "That' what we're trying to
> emphasize for the Internet." Nearly 50 years of United States rule, from
> the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898 until World War II, gave the
> Philippines an American-style educational system in which English is
> taught to almost all of the country's 76 million people -- 95 percent of
> which are literate. An accompanying table lists the fastest growing
> importers of U.S.high-tech parts for manufacturers, and the
> fastest-growing exporters of high-tech goods to the U.S. Source of the
> data is the American Electronics Association (The New York Times, page
> C1).
>
> The Census Bureau has begun the controversial statistical sampling that
> will estimate the number and characteristics of people who might have been
> missed in the traditional head count, Director Kenneth Prewitt says. The
> agency has interviewed by telephone 56,000 of the 314,000 households in
> the sample. The Census Bureau says that sampling is a scientifically sound
> way to correct the disproportionate undercount of minorities -- groups
> that tend Democratic. Because two sets of population census counts will
> be available, states will have to decide which one to use when they begin
> redrawing political districts next year (USA Today, page 10A).
>
> Syndicated columnist Julianne Malveaux, appearing in USA Today (page 15)
> says that on equal pay matters, the data are daunting. Despite their
> gains, women on average earn about 75 cents for every dollar men earn.
> Women of color earn even less: African-American women earn 64 cents, and
> Hispanic women 55 cents, for every dollar men earn. To be sure, when we
> compare women and men by age, education, and occupation, the gap narrows
> considerably, but it hardly ever disappears. Even in high-tech fields,
> where gender ought not to matter, men have the salary edge.
>
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