Shooting the messenger

Date: Friday, January 03, 2003 8:36 AM

H-1B and JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER

www.ZaZona.com

Bush has decided to cover up a key indicator used to track mass layoffs. It
will now be much more difficult to determine when companies replace American
workers with H-1Bs. Until now we could compare LCAs submitted with the
number of people a company was terminating. That might be very difficult to
do now.

Shooting the messenger: Layoff-poll funds cut
David Lazarus, Chronicle Business Columnist
Friday, January 3, 2003
Š2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/01/03/LAZARUS.TMP

The Bush administration, under fire for its handling of the economy, has
quietly killed off a Labor Department program that tracked mass layoffs by
U.S. companies.

The statistic, which had been issued monthly and was closely watched by
hard-hit Silicon Valley, served as a pulse reading of corporate America's
financial health.

There's still plenty of economic data available charting employment trends
nationwide. But the mass-layoffs stat comprised an easy-to-understand
overview of which industries are in the greatest distress and which workers
are bearing the brunt of the turmoil.

"It was a visible number," said Gary Schlossberg, senior economist at Wells
Capital Management in San Francisco. "In times like these, it was a good
window on how businesses were cutting back."

No longer. But then, businesses cutting back didn't exactly jibe with the
White House's recent declarations that prosperity is right around the
corner.

You had to look pretty hard just to learn that the mass-layoffs stat had
been scotched. No announcement was made by the Labor Department, and no
prominent mention of the change was posted at the department's Web site.

In fact, news of the program's termination came only in the form of a single
paragraph buried deep within a press release issued on Christmas Eve about
November's mass layoffs.

It simply said that funding for the program had dried up and that the Labor
Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics was unable to find an alternative
source of funding.

No doubt as intended, the announcement slipped by virtually unnoticed. Even
state officials were surprised to learn of the demise of what they called an
important, if downbeat, barometer of the nation's economy.

Sharon Brown oversaw compilation of the mass-layoffs number at the Bureau of
Labor Statistics in Washington. She was pleased to blow her agency's horn.

HIGH-QUALITY PROGRAM
"This was a high-quality program, producing timely information on important
developments in the labor market," Brown said.

According to the bureau's final monthly report, U.S. employers initiated
2,150 mass layoffs in November, affecting 240,028 workers. A mass layoff is
defined as any firing involving at least 50 people.

California by far had the most employees given the boot -- 62,764, primarily
in administrative services. Wisconsin was a distant second with 15,544,
followed by Texas with 14,624.

Between January and November, 17,799 mass layoffs were recorded and nearly 2
million workers were handed their hats by businesses.

Brown said that because of a bureaucratic quirk, the $6.6 million in annual
funding for the mass-layoffs program -- money primarily doled out to state
officials to gather relevant data -- was channeled through the Labor
Department's Employment and Training Administration.

FUNDING ELIMINATED
When that agency decided it needed more cash to handle its own affairs, the
Bureau of Labor Statistics was told to look elsewhere for its budget needs.

Apparently no extra money was to be found anywhere within the Labor
Department, which had a total budget of $44.4 billion last year, up from
$39.2 billion in 2001.

"With very finite discretionary resources, we have to make difficult
decisions," said Mason Bishop, the Labor Department's deputy assistant
secretary for employment training. "We didn't see how this program was
helping workers re-enter the workforce."

Coincidentally, the same conclusion was reached in 1992 when the first
President Bush canceled the Mass-Layoffs Statistics program amid
election-year charges that he had bungled handling of the economy.

REVIVED BY CLINTON
The program was resuscitated two years later by the Clinton administration.

Now Bush the younger is following in his father's footsteps, once again
deciding that the American people have no real need to know how many mass
layoffs are made each month.

"It's questionable what value this program has for workers," insisted
Bishop.

On the other hand, the Labor Department this week released a sweeping study
of volunteer work over the past year, reporting that 59 million Americans
donated their time and know-how to helping others.

President Bush has spoken repeatedly about the virtues of volunteerism since
taking office in 2001.

VOLUNTEERISM MEASURED
During his own stint in the White House, the elder Bush was a proud advocate
of community service. That was also the last time the Labor Department was
told to devote its finite discretionary resources to a study of volunteer
work by U.S. citizens.

Then, as now, it's difficult to see how feel-good surveys of volunteer
activities contribute to an understanding of the economy's vitality or the
re-employment of displaced workers.

There does seem to be merit, though, in easily seeing how many people have
received pink slips as companies tighten their belts, and which states and
industries are in facing the greatest challenges.

"The United States economy is growing again," Bush declared in a holiday
radio address from his Texas ranch. "This economy is strong and it can be
stronger."

And if not, best to just sweep the whole mess under the rug.

E-mail David Lazarus at dlazarus@sfchronicle.com.

Š2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback

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