2001-07-01
 

2001-07-02

2001-07-02
Hu Hui-Lin _eTaiwan News_
Finding the assassinators of Chen Wen-chen: 20 years later
"The 1960s and 1970s were a time of great changes in world order, and Dr. Chen Wen-chen, who had studied abroad, breathed the air of democracy and freedom that prevailed in western nations.   The stifling and closed-off political and academic atmosphere of Taiwan affected him deeply, and he urgently wanted to return home to offer what he had learnt.   But just as with the Lin Yi-hsiung family murders, Chen Wen-chen's ideals met their death in the cold-blooded horror of the White Terror; in the political atmosphere of the times, everybody knew why he had been killed, and yet the case remained unsolved...   Dr. Chen Wen-chen's violent death on a visit to his old home...   Chen Wen-chen was born into a poor family in Linkou, Taipei County, in 1950...   in 1978... he was employed to teach at Carnegie Mellon University...   gave financial support to Formosa magazine, published in Taiwan...   On 1981-05-20... he returned to Taiwan...   By the end of June, it was almost time for him to return to his job in the U.S., but he was unable to obtain an exit permit.   On the morning of July 2, three members of the Taiwan Garrison Command summoned Chen for questioning and took him from his house.   His parents, wife, child, siblings and friends never saw him alive again...   in the early hours of July 3, Chen's body had already been discovered on the NTU campus...   In August, Chen Su-jen returned to the U.S. with her son, where she was met by the magnanimous assistance of Carnegie Mellon's president Richard Cyert, and the consolation of the local Taiwanese community.   Cyert sent Professor Morris DeGroot of the Department of Statistics and forensics expert Dr. Cyril Wecht to Taiwan to carry out an autopsy, and on their return to the U.S., they held a press conference, where they confirmed that 'Chen Wen-chen was murdered'."
 

2001-07-03

2001-07-04

2001-07-05

2001-07-05
_USA Today_/_Reuters_
US Firms Increase June Job Cut Plans 56% according to Challenger
alternate link
"Job cut announcements rose to 124,852 in June, up from 80,140 in May. It was the sixth time in 7 months that planned job cuts totaled more than 100K. In the first half of 2001, U.S. corporations said they planned to cut 777,362 jobs, more than 3 times the number announced during the first 6 months of last year... The technology sector had the highest number of job cut announcements in June, with 27,446, bringing the total number of lay-offs announced in the sector to 130,442 for the first half of the year... The industrial goods sector had the second-highest number of planned job cuts in June with 22,698, followed by the services sector, with 11,463, and the food sector, with 9,269."
 

2001-07-06

2001-07-06
_BridgeNews_/_Industry Week_
US June Lay-Offs Up 56%
"U.S. lay-offs totaled 124,852 in June, up 56% from May, according to the Chicago-based Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. monthly report of job cuts.   Job cuts have now exceeded 100K six out of the last 7 months, with the 6-month total for this year at 770,362 compared with 223,421 during the same period last year, the report said.   The 6-month total for this year is already 15% higher than the total of 677,795 job-cut announcements in 1998, which was the biggest job-cut year of the last decade, the report said.   On a year-over-year basis, lay-off announcements were up 624% in June compared with 17,241 job-cut announcements during the same month last year.   On a quarterly basis, job-cut announcements were slightly lower in the second quarter compared with the first quarter.   Job-cut announcements totaled 370,556 in the second quarter, down 9% from a total of 406,806 in the first quarter."

2001-07-06
Michael Lind _UPI_
Say No to Guest-Workers
"Fox has proposed to alleviate the poverty problem in Mexico by dramatically increasing the number of Mexican nationals who labor in the United States as temporary guest workers...   According to the Labor Department, the real wages of agricultural workers have dropped from $6.89 an hour to $6.18 an hour between 1989 and 1998.   If the farm labor market is so tight, then why are wages going down?"
 

2001-07-07

2001-07-07
_DoL ETA_
unemployment insurance weekly claims

• 526,826 initial claims
• 3,093,737 continuing claims
• 2.4% insured unemployment rate

2001-07-08

2001-07-09

2001-07-10

2001-07-11

2001-07-11
_Chandigarh India Times_
Brain drain costs India $2G
alternate link
"India is estimated to be losing a massive $2G a year in resources as a result of emigration of Indian professionals to the USA.   'The average total cost to India for providing a university education to one professional is about $15K to $20K.   This means that India is losing as much as $2G a year in resources as a result of this emigration.', according to the Human Development Report 2001, by the UNDP.   Calculating the losses by multiplying the cost of training of each student by 1 lakh ([100K] the number of professionals expected to leave India each year for the next 3 years), the UNDP has said, 'at the high end, it brings the resource loss to $2G a year.'"
 

2001-07-12

2001-07-12
_USA Today_
Laid-off workers struggle to cope

2001-07-12
Porter Anderson _CNN_
Tech lay-offs: Informed by pink e-mail and still unemployed
"76% of those who've been laid off in the last 6 months remain unemployed.   And 65% of those laid off 6 months to a year ago are still looking for work...   few careerists today have been untouched by the ominous waves of lay-offs sweeping the economy, particularly in the tech and dot-com sectors.   Morgan is no exception.   On [2000] December 13, 120 techies.com employees were laid off, roughly 40% of the staff at this Minneapolis-based Internet hub for IT workers and employees [which no longer exists in 2008]...   Surveyed employees making less than $50K per year were less likely to receive severance than more highly-paid employees.   In this study's data, workers in the New England states got the best severance deals of any region, while those in the South generally received the worst.   Mountain state workers also fared fairly well as far as severance went...   Only 8% of our respondents overall were given new job offers when the company was hiring again."
 

2001-07-13

2001-07-13
_Alabama @ Work_
Lay-Offs
"The down-turn in the economy is affecting companies here in Alabama in the form of lay-offs."
 

2001-07-14

2001-07-15

2001-07-16

2001-07-16 11:44PDT (14:44EDT) (18:44GMT)
_Reuters_/_Silicon Valley_/_San Jose Mercury News_
Young, educated and jobless after U.S. tech bust
"Three months ago, Jennifer Bussell quit a 6-figure job in Internet marketing, packed up her swanky condo on Chicago's Lake Shore Drive and moved to New York in search of an exciting new opportunity.   Her timing could not have been worse.   Unemployed, broke and living for free at a friend's house 2.5 hours from the city, Bussell has joined the ranks of highly educated, experienced and once-highly paid young professionals adrift without jobs in the wake of an investment bust in U.S. technology companies.
The technology industry has been particularly hard hit after years of booming investment in the sector suddenly dried up.   The Industry Standard magazine's Web site, which tracks lay-offs and failures at Internet-related companies, has counted about 131K job losses since 1999 December and 245 corporate failures.   Nationwide, the unemployment rate has climbed to 4.5K from a low of 3.9% last October.   Bussell is one of at least 1M Americans looking for work and although she is educated, experienced and determined, it is not easy to find.   Dressed in weather-defying cowboy hat and leather boots on a particularly hot and sticky day recently, Bussell, with her long, red Botticelli Venus hair, exuded charm and vivaciousness.   But her inviting personality, her 10-year work history and her college degree have done her little good in the dozens of job interviews she has gone to so far this year."
 

2001-07-17

2001-07-17
_USA Today_
Companies Begin Another Round of Job Cuts
 

2001-07-18

2001-07-19

2001-07-20

2001-07-21

2001-07-22

2001-07-22
Thomas Kupper _San Diego Union-Tribune_
More firms are small, weak & vulnerable
"Companies come and go, and those that don't adapt and innovate disappear.   With investors looking for an 'exit strategy' that can include selling the company, even successful new ventures are often taken over, sometimes with unpredictable results for the employees.   The upside of this has been that hundreds of companies have gotten started, creating tens of thousands of jobs and enabling the development of new technologies and products.   The down-side is that this process has created a community in which many companies are small, weak and vulnerable.   Many of the workers who help build these companies face constant instability and insecurity, which inevitably gets worse when the economy sours.   The process also makes it difficult to build blue chip companies, the kind that can be counted on to anchor the economy in the future and that tend to be heavy donors to community organizations."
 

2001-07-23

2001-07-23
Cynthia M. Latta _Extortion Administration_ The U.S. Economy: Between Two Eras (pdf)
 

2001-07-24

2001-07-24
Ellen Florian _Fortune_
Lay-Off Count and Death Watch
"Lay-off count 441,643...   Last month FORTUNE 500 companies announced 63,338 job cuts, according to consulting firm Challenger Gray & Christmas, bringing the year's total to 441,643.   Last year dot-coms were floating on air; this year they're 6 feet under.   Another 22 became worm food last month, boosting our 2001 total to 240."

2001-07-24
Ron Paul _US House of Representatives_
Patient Privacy Act
 

2001-07-25

2001-07-25
Sue Shellenbarger _Wall Street Journal_
Employees Can Better Cope With Both Kinds of Stress
"Job stress is rising, with 33% of 2500 workers in a survey this year reporting feeling an increase in stress from a year ago, compared with 31% making the claim in 1998, according to the Yankelovich Monitor."
 

2001-07-26

2001-07-27

2001-07-27
Elizabeth Blakey _CNN_/_eCommerce Times_/_CIO Today_/_NewsFactor_
Dot-Com Job Cuts Decline for Third Straight Month
Tech News World
"July dot-com job cuts fell 6% from June, when 9,216 job cuts were announced, marking the third consecutive month of declines according to CGC...   Dot-com firms announced 8,697 job cuts in July, the lowest monthly figure since 2000 October when 5,677 jobs were lost, according to a report released Friday by executive search firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas (CGC)...   In 2001 January, there were 12,828 job cuts from 122 firms, or an average of 105 cuts per company.   In 2001 July, 55 firms made job-cut announcements, but the ratio increased to 159 cuts per company...   July dot-com job cuts fell 6% from June, when 9,216 job cuts were announced, marking the third consecutive month of declines according to CGC.   However, 2001 July cuts were up 296% from 2000 July, when 2,194 jobs were eliminated.   2001 July is the eighth consecutive time that the monthly figure increased over the same month a year earlier.   Since January, dot-coms have announced 82,896 job cuts, more than double the number announced in all of 2000, which saw a total of 41,214 pink slips...   With a July total of 2,738 job cuts, technology ranked second behind consumer service firms.   CGC defines the dot-com technology sector as companies that build and maintain the Internet's infrastructure, such as servers, networking devices, telecommunication services and equipment...   According to a recent survey by the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), US firms will need to fill about 900K information technology (IT) slots this year."

2001-07-27
Jennifer Disabatino _Computer World_
Dot-gone slow-down?
"New York-based Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., which has followed the dot-com fall-out for more than a year, said this month's lay-off numbers hold some hope for those waiting for a tech industry turnaround.   Although companies announced plans to cut 8,697 jobs in July (4 times as many cuts as were announced in July last year), that was still the lowest monthly number of lay-offs since October, when there were 5,677.   By comparison, there were 9,216 lay-offs announced in last month.   The largest number of lay-offs came from Internet companies that provide consumer services..."
 

2001-07-28

2001-07-29

2001-07-30

2001-07-30 02:00PDT (05:00EDT) (09:00GMT)
Joanna Glasner _Wired_
Resume Glut Hits Silicon Valley
"While job sites are full of positions that sound good, the process of actually getting the attention of those doing the hiring seems harder than ever, tech workers say.   Job leads turn into dead ends.   Contacts don't respond.   Or requests for e-mails of resumes generate so much response that later applicants are rewarded only with an automated message saying the receiving in-box is full.   The lack of response has led a few jaded job seekers to question how many of the hundreds of thousands of jobs posted on leading on-line employment sites actually exist.   'What happens with many of these positions is they're never closed.', said David, an unemployed San Franciscan who last worked as director of marketing at a now-defunct Internet start-up.   He says he makes a habit of first looking at job postings and then searching for the employee's name on FuckedCompany, a site that tracks lay-offs and closures at so-called new economy companies.   A few times, he's found that the company offering the job no longer exists or has just laid off most of its staff.   Other times, job postings that looked new turned out to be several months old."

2001-07-30 02:00PDT (05:00EDT) (09:00GMT)
Joanna Glasner _Wired_
Resume Glut Hits Silicon Valley
"Although companies are still hiring, he said, they're more apt to take their time filling positions and to be quite picky about a candidate's qualifications.   Judging from the resumes they're receiving, many companies believe they can afford to be picky."
 

2001-07-31

This was a slow news day.

2001 July
Steve R. Runnels _Nature and Science_
Trust and Education (pdf)
"With the [Dallas Science] Museum reaching over 50K school age children annually we must continue to look for new ways to meet the educational needs of the populations we serve.   The scientific illiteracy of Americans has reached crisis proportions.   The National Science Foundation [NSF, back in 1986, projected] a shortage of up to 675K scientists and engineers by the year 2006 [but this was discredited before 1992]."

_BigCharts.com_ S&P Retail Index
Note the signs of weakness shown in the dip from 1998 July through November, relatively flat 1999, and the drop all through 2000.

AAA southern California fuel prices
AAA national fuel prices
AAA state by state

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