Word: joblessness
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...unemployment report is not the only reason for thinking so. It is, in fact, so upbeat as to seem almost suspicious. The jobless rate plunged from 6.8% in October to 6.4% in November. That was the lowest in almost three years, since January 1991, and the drop was the greatest for any single month since October 1983. The November rate, in fact, was about what some forecasters had been predicting for the end of next year. There is always a chance that any startling one-month fluctuation will turn out to be a fluke, or at least subject to later...
Though some economists think the jobless rate may get stuck at 6.4% for a while or even creep back up, Tyson and some private forecasters see a chance for it to go down further. The reasoning: inventories by one estimate are the lowest in 20 years, but factory orders are up, 1.2% in October; presumably they will have to be filled by new production. The average workweek in manufacturing has increased to 41.7 hours, the most since World War II, which leaves little or no room to raise output by working the existing staff still harder. Some factories will have...
...called Lane Kirkland of the AFL-CIO to say their bitter differences on the trade pact should not prevent them from joining forces on health-care reform and worker- retraining plans. He called Dan Rostenkowski and urged the House Ways and Means Committee chairman to push the languishing jobless-benefits bill. From the White House, Hillary Clinton joined in, telephoning Tom Donahue, Kirkland's secretary-treasurer, to make amends. "The President," said one aide, "is into healing...
...from 7.8% in June 1992 to 6.8% last month, but still far higher than normal for this stage of an expansion. But the unemployment rate is a grossly inadequate measure of hardship. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich estimates that in addition to the 8.8 million people officially counted as jobless, 1.2 million are so discouraged that they have quit looking for work and thus are no longer counted. The Bureau of Labor Statistics figures that as many as 6.2 million more would like to work full time but have taken part-time jobs because that is all they...
Even those calculations do not complete the picture. Some of those who are unemployed may be loath to admit it. Thomas Mooney, president of the Chamber of Commerce in Rochester, New York, is puzzled over why the area's stated jobless rate is below 5% despite brutal payroll slashing by Eastman Kodak, the region's biggest employer. His conclusion: many Kodak workers were not laid off outright but were coaxed or pushed into early retirement, and "an awful lot of those people become consultants. Whether or not they have any clients, I don't know. But if they...