Economic News 2000 August

updated: 2013-12-04

2000-08-01

2000-08-02

2000-08-02 06:06PDT (09:06EDT) (13:06GMT)
Alex Frew McMillan _CNN_/_Money_
CEOs bite the dust
"CEO departures stepped up 20% in the 6 months through July, compared with the 6 months before that, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc...   Computing and financial-services companies were the most roiled, accounting for a combined 29.3% of the CEO departures."
 

2000-08-03

2000-08-04

2000-08-05

2000-08-05
Jube Shiver _Los Angeles Times_
Black professional and civil rights groups say the high-tech industry isn't doing enough to recruit domestically: Alliance Fights Boost in H-1B Visas
alternate link

2000-08-06

2000-08-07

2000-08-08

2000-08-09

2000-08-09 14:02PDT (17:02EDT) (22:02UK) (21:02GMT)
_BBC_
US economy slowing
"There were further signs on Wednesday that the US economy may be slowing sufficiently to avoid a further interest rate rise.   7 out of 12 Federal Reserve district banks reported slower growth in July, according to the central bank's Beige Book report on current business conditions...   One staffing service contact in the Chicago area said that meeting its customers' needs for workers was 'like torture'...   the fear is that inflation may be fuelled by employers forced to pay higher wages to attract staff...   consumer spending, manufacturing and construction were all 'slightly softer' in July than in May."
 

2000-08-10

2000-08-10
Carolyn Said _San Francisco Chronicle_
Dot-Coms Struggle to Survive
"According to a survey of 238 Internet start-ups nationwide, 41 dot-coms have collapsed this year; 29 have been sold, mainly in 'fire sales'; and 83 have withdrawn their initial public offering plans...   'The main factor is that a number of sites curently are running into brick walls when it comes to their B round of financing or their initial public offerings.', said Tim Miller, president of Webmergers...   The Webmergers.com study found 98 companies had laid off employees; a study last month by out-placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas put the figure at about 120 companies, accounting for 7,500 lay-offs."
 

2000-08-11

2000-08-12

2000-08-13

2000-08-14

2000-08-14
James E. Challenger _Today's Careers_
Internet-driven down-sizings push unemployed insurance and investment professionals into entrepreneurship
"A University of Texas study reports 1998 Internet revenues reached $301G, a third of which was generated by e-commerce.   According to the study, the U.S. Internet economy grew 174.5% between 1995 and 1998...   Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. research reveals that in the last 10 months alone, nearly 13K job cuts were announced by insurance and securities companies -- including such major firms as Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, Salomon Smith Barney, Metropolitan Life Insurance and Cigna."

2000-08-14
Helene Jorgensen & Hans Riemer _The American Prospect_
Permatemps
North American Alliance for Fair Employment
WashTech
more related links
"The temporary work industry has been around for a long time, but it exploded in the 1990s.   The number of temp agency jobs has doubled in the past 6 years, to 3.5M...   Temps are part of a broader move to contingent employment -- which includes part-timers and contract workers, often with sub-standard pay and benefit arrangements...   One of the most striking new developments is the rise of 'permatemps'.   These are employees who, for all practical purposes, are part of a company's permanent work force.   Yet they are actually employed not by that company, but rather by a temp agency.   Permatemps are found in all sectors of the economy, from low-wage service jobs to high-tech, new-economy jobs.   Until recently, for example, nearly 35% of M$'s U.S. workers were not on the M$ pay-roll.   M$ hired them (laundered them, really) through temp agencies that provide limited benefits and inferior wage scales...   According to U.S. Department of Education data, annual incomes for young adults tipped into a decades-long decline in the early 1970s that has barely nosed upward with the current expansion.   Young people without a college degree -- three-quarters of the age group -- earned about 25% less in 1998 (after adjusting for inflation) than their counterparts did in 1973.   Only women with a college degree have made modest progress, with a 12% increase in wages...   Temporary workers age 20-34 earn approximately 16% less than their counterparts who do the same work but are regular employees.   Only 5% have employer-provided health coverage, and a similar number have some sort of retirement plan administered by their employer...   Rather than seeking to meet a real short-term need, many employers use temporary agencies to avoid responsibilities to workers.   This maneuver excludes employees from benefit plans, pay scales, and collectivebargaining agreements."
 

2000-08-15

2000-08-16

2000-08-17

2000-08-16 20:00PDT (23:00EDT) (2000-08-17 03:00GMT)
Viktorya Tobak _CBS.MarketWatch.com_
High-tech executives lobby
"A 'new economy' panel presented by TechNet [a tech executive lobbying organization] and the New Democrat Network was proof that tech executives have undertaken a massive effort to shape policies affecting their industry."

2000-08-17
Neil Fater _Andover Townsman_
Latest losses announced: Agilent lay-offs hit Andover
"About 150 full-time Andover employees and another 70 contact workers learned this week that they will lose their jobs at Andover's Agilent Technologies...   Worldwide, Agilent says that about 450 of the 5K full-time workers in its Healthcare Solutions Group will be affected by a 'global restructuring' of this division.   Another 200 contract workers will also be let go."

2000-08-17
Dan Stein _Pop.Stop_/_Washington Times_
Visa Scam
"Most readers will recognize the revived series of cheap shots on FAIR by Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) for what it is ('FAIR Targets Abraham' 2000 July 26), an attack by party regulars paid to lobby for particular interests.   This time it's the 'conservative' gurus at ATR -- led by Grover Norquist -- who are mad at FAIR [Federation for American Immigration Reform].   Our crime?   We've highlighted fraud in the H1-B foreign labor program.   Never mind that most Americans abhor these programs as modern forms of indenture.   Never mind that every impartial study of the practice has found that foreign labor programs push Americans out of these fields.   Never mind that the overall response to the ads opposing more foreign labor has been overwhelmingly positive.   And never mind that ATR is attacking FAIR because Mr. Norquist's clients fear that FAIR's views are resonating with Americans across the nation.
 
Mr. Norquist's clients?   Full disclosure on the part of ATR president Grover Norquist would reveal that he's paid by MSFT and others to take a positivist legislative agenda to Congress (including the importation of more foreign labor).   It seems Mr. Norquist has a habit of donning more corporate hats than Dr. Seuss' Bartholomew Cubbins and neglecting to mention conflicts of interest
 
Mr. Norquist and his fellow travelers also claim unto themselves the right to be the sole arbiters of 'true conservatism', an ideology that now inventively includes unregulated mass immigration into America.   A quick review of the history of real conservative thought from Russell Kirk to Edmund Burke (including even Adam Smith and his fellow invisible hands) suggests that support for mass immigration has been either antithetical to conservative thought or -- at most -- a neutral factor...
 
The H-1B program has been a sham from the beginning.   It uses recently graduated foreign students to do jobs under conditions that discourage Americans from moving into these fields.   Don't get me wrong.   Neither FAIR, nor most Americans, opposes a legitimate, clearly defined, and well-enforced program that meets unforeseeable temporary labor shortages -- especially one requiring extraordinary merit and ability.   But the bill introduced by senator Spencer Abraham is no more than a blank check that generic employers could fill in as they see fit.   H-1B fosters a dependency on substitutable foreign labor.   That's why most H-1B workers lack extraordinary resumes.   They're just plain Jane substitutes for U.S. programmers, engineers -- and now even fashion models and sushi chefs...
 
Our free enterprise system is to serve the people -- our people.   Ceteris paribus -- a country should do its own work.   We believe a more limited immigration flow is consistent with our belief that there is an obligation to protect the health of our social institutions, our jobs and the environment."
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2000-08-18

2000-08-19

2000-08-20

2000-08-21

2000-08-22

2000-08-23

2000-08-24

2000-08-24
Gene Koprowski & Rob Stein _stockbrokers.com_
"What Does Increase In Dot-Com Job Cuts Mean?"
 

2000-08-25

2000-08-25 05:56PDT (08:56EDT) (12:56GMT)
Shelly K. Schwartz _CNN_
Electrical engineers (see graph)
 

2000-08-26

2000-08-27

2000-08-28

2000-08-29

2000-08-29
Walter F. Roche _Baltimore MD Sun_
2 plead not guilty of visa fraud and money laundering charges
"Two men who ran a company that promised visas for foreign investors seeking a new life in America pleaded not guilty yesterday to charges that included immigration fraud, conspiracy and money laundering.   James F. O'Connor and James A. Geisler... two executives of the Herndon-based Interbank Group...   In an 80-page indictment made public Aug. 11, a federal grand jury charged that the two men filed about 320 false visa applications with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service [USCIS] in 1997 and 1998.   The applications were filed under a 10-year-old program under which foreigners can get a permanent green card by investing from $500K to $1M in an American business.   The indictment charges that Geisler and O'Connor told investors they had to put up only $100K or $150K to qualify for the program.   Investors were told that the balance could be made up from loans, prosecutors alleged...   According to the indictment, $134M was moved back and forth through foreign bank accounts as part of the scheme.   The Interbank Group was one of several companies set up to take advantage of a provision in a 1990 immigration law designed to spur foreign investment in the United States.   Known as the investor visa program, the law allows up to 10K people per year to get green cards."
 

2000-08-30

2000-08-30
William J. Holstein _US News & World Report_/_Keep Media_
Are Raises Bad for America?
"Dell Computer is on a hiring tear, with plans to add as many as 5K people to its pay-roll over the next year.   Problem is, the job market in its home-town, Austin, TX, as in many other parts of the country, is tighter than a pair of bicycle shorts.   In particular, demand for such specialists as systems engineers and programmers is white hot, and pay levels are inching up.   But Dell wouldn't dream of charging more for its personal computers to offset rising labor costs.   'We're not in the business of passing through price increases.', says Vice Chairman Kevin Rollins.   'We're passing through price decreases.'...
 
They are also tapping new pools of labor, both urban and rural.   Dell, for example, has opened a factory in job-hungry Tennessee, where it has been flooded with 7K resumes for 700 positions...
 
Moreover, the 'churn' rate in the work force is exceptionally high.   Despite a booming economy, out-placement consultant Challenger, Gray & Christmas says American companies will lay off more than 700K workers this year, the most this decade.   Yet overall unemployment remains at 4.3%.   The implication is that employers are shedding older, more expensive workers and replacing them with new employees or relying on various forms of contingent labor [i.e. bodyshopping] (story, Page 48).   'Down-sizing is a valve that releases wage inflation steam.', says John Challenger, chief executive of the Chicago-based firm.
 
Changes in the nature of American labor markets lead the more dovish economists to argue that, yes, maybe one day tight labor conditions will trigger inflation, but it isn't happening yet.   They point out that there isn't much evidence of statistically meaningful inflation in either the latest consumer or producer price indexes...   Larry Kudlow, chief economist at Schroders in New York, points out that there are still nearly 6M American adults who are unemployed."
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2000-08-31

2000 August
_Employment Policy Institute_
The Living Wage: Survey of Economists
"More than three-fourths of labor economists believe a national living wage would result in employers hiring better skilled applicants than they hired before the increase.   Similarly, more than three-fourths of labor economists believe that a national living wage policy would result in employment losses.   On a local level, the higher the proposed level of the living wage (in terms of its percentage of the current minimum wage level) the more likely employers are to hire better-skilled applicants.   Also, the higher the proposed level of the living wage (in terms of its percentage of the current minimum wage level) the more likely employment losses will result.   More than 8 in 10 labor economists strongly oppose using a family of 4 as the standard for setting hourly minimum wage levels.   Economists are also strongly opposed to using a family of three as the standard for setting minimum wage levels.   Labor economists were asked to rate the efficiency of three proposed policies which address the income needs of poor families: a living wage ordinance, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and general welfare grants.   Of these 3 options, the Earned Income Tax Credit is rated most efficient."
 

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