> BLS DAILY REPORT, TUESDAY, JUNE 20, 2000:
>
> About 101,400 lost their jobs because of mass layoffs in April, the lowest
> number for that month since 1996, says the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
> Such layoffs involve 50 or more workers (The Wall Street Journal "Work
> Life" feature, page 1).
>
> "Did the Labor Department get the May employment report wrong?" asks USA
> Today (page B1). The surprising uptick in unemployment -- to 4.1 percent
> from 3.9 percent a month earlier -- was initially embraced by economists
> and investors as a sign that the Federal Reserve's six short-term interest
> rate increases over the past year had finally put the brakes on the
> economy. Now they aren't sure about the report. From the outset, the
> unemployment numbers seemed too good to be true. The May report showed
> that private industry cut 116,000 jobs, the biggest drop in 9 years. Yet
> the economy itself seemed to be humming nicely. The unemployment numbers
> flew in the face of other evidence, too. A Manpower survey showed
> companies eager to hire workers. Manufacturers indicated brisk
> production. The unemployment figures are computed with two surveys: a
> payroll report, in which employers report the number of workers they pay,
> and a door-to-door survey in which residents are asked their employment
> status. While those figures never match exactly, in May the household
> survey found a decline of 1 million workers, while payrolls increased
> 231,000. The discrepancy gave economists pause, says the chief U.S.
> economist at Lehman Bros. Many had expected the unemployment rate to be
> virtually unchanged from April's 3.9 percent. Here's what might have gone
> wrong:
> 1. Usually the employment survey is taken on the week (Sunday to
> Saturday) that includes the 12th of the month. In May, the 12th fell on a
> Friday, so the survey period was very short.
> 2. May is a big month for hiring, as students fan out for summer jobs,
> and the survey may have missed that.
> 3. The Census Bureau, which collects the raw employment data for the
> Bureau of Labor Statistics, was doing Census counting at the same time it
> was doing the separate household employment survey. The workload could
> have caused mistakes.
> "It is hard to ignore the possibility that the venerable employment report
> -- supposedly the best monthly indicator -- laid an egg in May, writes
> Joseph Abate in Lehman Bros.' weekly economic monitor.
>
> The U.S. chapter of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
> says many of its members can't find work. that's led the group to join
> the Immigration Reform Coalition, a group hoping to restrict the number of
> temporary skilled-worker visas issued each year. The current visa system
> "isn't good for the profession, and it isn't good for the U.S.," says a
> former IEEE-USA president. But the Bureau of Labor Statistics says the
> unemployment rate last year for experienced electrical engineers was just
> 1.4 percent, and colleges say they cannot churn out enough. But the
> former IEEE-USA president says many of those without jobs are older
> engineers who were let go after the Cold War and now hold lower-paying
> jobs in other fields. The vice president of the National Society of
> Professional Engineers says she sympathizes with the older engineers (The
> Wall Street Journal "Work Life" feature, page 1).
>
> Lifeguard jobs go begging, says The New York Times ( June 18, page 1).
> Ocean City, New Jersey, for example, has dipped deep into its personnel
> files and asked old-timers who were lifeguards in the past to come back
> and fill empty stations. Moonlighting stock brokers, lawyers, doctors,
> engineers and casino floorwalkers are working as lifeguards on the
> weekends. As go the beaches of the New Jersey shore, so go the workplaces
> of the nation. For the last 10 years, fewer teenagers and young adults
> have been venturing into the summer workforce. Last year, even with
> desperate managers dangling finder's fees, tuition plans and other lures,
> just 62 percent of America's 16 million people between 16 and 19 years old
> were in the labor force, compared with a high of 718 percent in 1978, and
> the lowest percentage since July 1965. The trend is most pronounced among
> young men, whose summer employment rate of 65 percent is down from 73.5
> percent in 1989 and the lowest since the Bureau of Labor Statistics
> started keeping track in 1948. The lengthy economic expansion has given
> growing numbers of families the means to support their children as they
> learn new languages, travel and undertake other adventures, and many
> parents are proud to be able to offer their offspring opportunities they
> never had. But the shift away from summer jobs also suggests that tens of
> thousands of teenagers are missing out on what some consider a hallowed
> American coming-of-age experience and, arguably, a social leveler that
> gives the college-bound a fleeting taste of working-class life. An
> accompanying chart, in which the source of the data is attributed to BLS,
> says that more teenagers are going to summer school...and fewer are
> choosing to work in summer jobs...and the ones that do are doing less
> manual work.
>
> Downtown Seattle has high-end rentals, says The New York Times "Real
> Estate" section (June 18, page 26). The article is illustrated with a
> table captioned "Indexes of Housing Costs" attributed to BLS, showing that
> rents in general jumped 3.2 percent in May, homeowner's costs 2.6 percent,
> and fuel and utilities 4.7 percent.
>
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