> BLS DAILY REPORT, MONDAY, APRIL 23, 2001:
>
> Regional jobless rates remained stable in March as 31 states continued to
> post unemployment rates that were below the national average of 4.3
> percent, the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. BLS
> said unemployment rates in all four regions of the United States -- the
> Northeast, South, Midwest and West -- were virtually unchanged from
> February as 44 states and the District of Columbia recorded shifts of 0.3
> percentage point or less. Even as layoff announcements rose in March to a
> record-high of 162,867--a 60 percent increase from the total job cut
> announcements in February--outplacement firm Challenger, Gray, & Christmas
> April 5 said nonfarm employment continued to rise in 29 states, BLS said
> (Daily Labor Report, page D-1).
>
> The total injury and illness rate for federal workers rose slightly in
> fiscal year 2000, while the number of federal employees
> killed on the job fell, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration
> announced April 20. The total injury and illness rate was 3.95 per 100
> workers, compared with 3.91 in 1999. That figure compares with a private
> sector injury and illness rate of 6.3 in 1999, according to figures
> released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in December 2000. While BLS
> reported that manufacturing companies continued to have the highest injury
> and illness rate -- 9.2 cases per 100 workers -- in the private sector, 10
> federal agencies had injury and illness rates that exceeded that level.
> The Architect of the Capitol had an injury and illness rate of 17.90 per
> 100 workers, which is nearly three times the 1999 rate in the overall
> private sector (Daily Labor Report, page A-10).
>
> The Wall Street Journal's "Tracking the Economy" feature (page A4) shows
> the Thomson Global Forecast for BLS' Employment Cost Index, First
> Quarter, to be released Thursday, as an increase of 1.1 percent. The
> previous quarter's actual ECI figure was 0.8 percent above the Third
> Quarter of 2000.
>
> Low salaries in a competitive economy, an explosion of prison building,
> and a tougher, more violent class of prison inmate have all contributed to
> a severe shortage of guards in prisons around the country, says Pam
> Belluck in The New York Times (April 21, page A1). Unable to find enough
> people willing to work as corrections officers and having even more
> trouble convincing those who do to stay, prison officials across the
> United States are unleashing a barrage of recruiting techniques. Staff
> turnover rates have risen steadily in recent years, with several states
> losing more people a year than they are able to hire. An average of 16
> percent of officers left in 1999, up from 9.6 percent in 1991, according
> to the Corrections Yearbook, published by the Criminal Justice Institute.
> In some states, the number is much higher; Arkansas lost 42 percent.
>
> A new survey indicates that working women have made substantial headway in
> Silicon Valley, where career optimism is high and the percentage of female
> electrical engineers is four times the national figure. Over all in
> Silicon Valley, an estimated 28 percent of company engineers are women, as
> are 17 percent of engineering and science managers. Among the region's
> computer programmers, 31 percent are women, compared with about 26 percent
> nationally. Slightly more than half the women surveyed said they worked
> in high technology jobs. Twenty-eight percent of women who work in
> technology said that gender was a significant barrier to advancement,
> compared with 15 percent in nontechnology jobs (The New York Times, page
> C3).
>
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