Economic News before 1997

Comverse Technology Inc.
"Verint digital security & surveillance solutions include the STAR-GATE & RELIANT communications interception products & LORONIX digital video security products.   STAR-GATE enables communications service providers to intercept communications over a variety of wireline, wireless & Internet protocol, or IP, networks for delivery to law enforcement & other government agencies.   RELIANT provides intelligent recording and analysis solutions for lawful interception activities, & is sold to law enforcement & government agencies.   LORONIX digital video security products provide intelligent recording & analysis of video for security and surveillance applications, & are sold to government agencies & public & private organizations, such as airports, public buildings, correctional facilities & corporate campuses."

Sweat Shops
"In the United States, over 400K jobs have been lost since 1973 as US corporations like Liz Claiborne and The Gap move operations over-seas.   Most of the workers in these factories are young women, although in some areas like Bangladesh, children from the ages of 10 and 14 also assemble the clothing we wear.   Workers typically live in crowded dormitories which lack adequate facilities.   These young women work 6 or 7 days a week, 10 to 15 hours a day, but don't make enough to afford decent meals; many are malnourished.   An 1996 October segment on 48 Hours revealed that workers in sub-contracted Nike factories in Vietnam make only $20 a month working 6 days a week, earnings equalling only half the country's minimum wage.   Nike recently claimed that 25% of their workers make Rp350,000, or US $47, a month.   However, the cost of 3 basic meals alone is $2.10 a day, or $65 a month.   While Nike may subsidize some of the workers' meals, they wouldn't have to if they paid a living wage."

Death from Over-Work in Japan
"In 1960 the average [Japanese] employee worked 2,432 hours a year - that's almost 50 hours a week with only 2 weeks of holiday.   In 1987 the government passed a new Labor Standards Law which decreased the work week from 48 to 40 hours.   By 1997 annual working hours reported by employers fell to 1,900 - about 38 hours a week.   These statistics are a little deceptive.   Japanese employers have a tradition of asking for 'service over-time' - unrecognized and unpaid work performed voluntarily by the employee.   A survey of employees themselves found that annual working hours are about 300 more than reported by the Ministry of Labor."

1950 April

1950 April
Garet Garrett _Ludwig von Mises Institute_
The March of Socialism
Index of articles on mises.org

1981 August
Daniel H.H. Ingalls _XEROX Palo Alto Research Center_/_Byte_
Design Principles Behind Smalltalk

1982-05-10
Sheldon Richman _Wall Street Journal_/_Future of Freedom Foundation_
Examining Reagan's Record on Trade
 

1983 November
Richard W. Riche, Daniel E. Hecker & John U. Burgan _Monthly Labor Review_
High technology today and tomorrow: A small slice of the employment pie
"High tech industries are expected to provide only a small proportion of the jobs created between 1982 and 1995, under 3 concepts which embrace from 6 to 48 industries...   Employment in high tech industries increased faster than average industry growth during the 1972-82 period.   High tech industries accounted for a relatively small proportion of all new, jobs nationwide, but provided a significant proportion of new jobs in some States and communities.   About 6 out of 10 high tech jobs are located in the 10 most populous States.   States with relatively high proportions of employment in high tech industries are generally small; most are in the Northeast.   Through 1995, employment in high tech industries is projected to grow somewhat faster than in the economy as a whole.   High tech industries, even broadly defined, will account for only a small proportion of new jobs through 1995.   Scientific and technical workers, while critical to the growth of industry and the economy, will account for only 6% of all new jobs through 1995...   Michael Boretsky, uses the 2 measures frequently employed in examining high technology: R&D expenditures as a percentage of industry value added, and industry employment of scientists, engineers, and technicians as a proportion of the industry work force...   We defined scientific and technical workers as engineers, life and physical scientists, mathematical specialists, engineering and science technicians and computer specialists .   We refer to these workers as technology-oriented workers.   We excluded government, colleges, and universities...   Group I accounted for 15.3% of new wage and salary jobs, group 11, 4.7%, and group III, 7.9% [between 1972 & 1982]...   Although for the Nation as a whole, high technology industries generated only between 4.7% and 15.3% of the new jobs in the United States during 1972-1982, several states showed greater growth."
MLR archive

1984 September
Clint Bolick _The Freeman_
Regulation of Telecommunications
"A second form of scarcity is 'economic scarcity', or the theory of 'natural monopoly'.   Some theorists argue that many communications technologies require such intensive capital investments that only one producer may profitably serve a given market.   Ostensibly protecting the citizenry from 'monopoly power', the governmental entity chooses and licenses a single producer as a 'franchisee' or 'common carrier', and then subjects that producer to extensive taxation and regulatory control.   This notion dates at least as far back as 1585, when the British crown awarded monopoly privileges to publishing guilds.   The artificial restriction on the number of publishers facilitated government censorship, but was ultimately undermined by sustained illicit competition.   In America, the concept of economic scarcity was suggested as a rationale for requiring newspapers to publish replies to unfavorable reporting -- an argument the Supreme Court firmly rejected.   But although the Court has opposed even the most 'benign' regulation of newspaper content, it has yet to fully extend this protection to the new media.   It has failed to do so because it asserts that differences in the characteristics of new media justify different degrees of First Amendment protection.   This approach contradicts the teachings of America's founders...   Despite deregulation at the Federal level, regulation of cable in America is increasingly extensive, restraining the full realization of that medium's enormous potential and laying the groundwork for massive state interference with editorial processes traditionally entrusted to private discretion...   Cable is an unnatural monopoly; few companies compete head-to-head only because the system of local franchises and pervasive regulations makes it unprofitable and frequently illegal to do so.   Even without direct competition, however, the existence of alternative technologies provides the ira-portant disciplinary effects of the marketplace, making 'public interest' regulation wholly unnecessary.   Open entry policies and the constant threat of competition would accomplish the same end.   Indeed, some local governments, recognizing that the natural monopoly myth rests on tenuous assumptions, have acted to exclude from their communities not only additional cable companies but competing alternative technologies as well...   Even before the rapid development of the new media, Justice William O. Douglas warned of the dangers involved in abandoning the commitment to First Amendment principles on the basis of technological change: 'The struggle for liberty has been a struggle against government...   [I]t is anathema to the First Amendment to allow government any role of censorship over newspapers, magazines, books, art, music, TV, radio or any other aspect of the press...   My conclusion is that the TV and radio stand in the same protected position as do newspapers and magazines...   for the fear that Madison and Jefferson had of government intrusions is perhaps even more relevant to TV and radio than it is to other like publications.'"

1985 February
Richard M. Devens, Carol Boyd Leon & Debbie L. Sprinkle _Monthly Labor Review_
Employment and unemployment in 1984
pdf
"Business services, one of the more cyclically sensitive of the service industries, led the division in both magnitude and rate of growth, making up 40% of the division's employment gain in 1984.   A continuing upward trend in personnel supply services -- particularly in temporary help -- explained a substantial proportion of business services' growth, although the pace of growth in this industry was a bit slower than in 1983.   The temporary help industry contributed about 1 in 30 of the additional private pay-roll jobs in 1984, down from 1 in 20 during earlier stages of the economic recovery."

1985 May 19
_American Engineering Association NewsLetter_
AEA Employment Watch
"In an effort to counter the myth of a shortage of skilled US workers, the American Engineering Association will maintain files of lay-off articles and articles dealing with shortened [and unpaid lengthened] work-weeks, forced early retirements, salary cuts, etc.   Since the main [dispenser of Engineering Shortage Propaganda] is the American Electronics Association [AeA], we will also flag those companies who retain a membership in that organization, or their parent company or a division of it, etc. is a member.   The totals column entry [20/37] means that 20 of 37 articles for the month were about lay-offs, etc. by members of the American Electronics Association...   We do feel that the files contain an indication of the overall health of the technical job market... 16,854 lay-offs... 20,400 salary freezes... 32,179 lay-offs year-to-date... 32,600 salary freezes to date. 15+ articles mentioning salary cuts."

1985 June 19
_American Engineering Association NewsLetter_
Salary Conspiracy: Pentagon asks contractors to depress salaries
"A recent study of defense firms' salaries yeilded the following results: Executives averaged 42% more than executives in other industries, factory workers about 8% more and engineers 2.5% less.   The study was conducted by the GAO...   54,955 lay-offs year-to-date...   'Calhoun, director of business development at Intel Corp., said... that US firms were already accelerating relocation over-seas because of a shortage of engineers here.'   'The shortage is so severe that Intel has been forced to open design facilities in Israel, France and Japan simply due to the availability of highly skilled technical talent.', Calhoun said...   We wonder if Mr. Calhoun or Intel has spoken to any of the 1983 or 1984 engineering grads who were unable to find an engineering job..."
 

1986 February
Marvin N. Olasky _Reason Magazine_
Hornswoggled!: How Ma Bell & Chicago Ed conned our grand-parents & stuck us with the bill
"Vail had been president of American Bell during the 1880s & rejoined the company in 1902 as a member of the AT&T board of directors.   At that time, Bell's dominance of the telephone industry could not be taken for granted.   In 1903 the company listed 1.3M subscribers.   That same year, according to a Census Bureau report, independent companies had over 2M.   By 1905 -- the year a book entitled _How the Bell Lost Its Grip_ came out -- the independents were breathing hard down Bell's neck.   Vail perceived that the threat came predominantly from competition, not regulation.   It was an accurate perception.   When he resumed AT&T's presidency in 1907, Vail immediately analyzed the Bell System's competitive problems, city by city.   In Toledo, for instance, Home Telephone Company had begun competing with the local Bell franchise in 1901.   Charging rates half those of Bell, it had 10K subscribers in 1906, compared to 6.7K for Bell.   In Nebraska & Iowa, independent phones out-numbered those of Bell 260K to 80K.   In his 1975 book, _Telephone: The First Hundred Years_, John Brooks reported that cities with referenda on the granting of independent franchises were voting decisively in favor of competition over regulated monopolies.   In Portland, OR, a new telephone company won a franchise by a vote of 12,213 to 560.   In Omaha the independent company was approved by a vote of 7,653 to 3,625, and in a national survey of 1,400 businessmen, 1,245 said that competition had resulted or could result in better phone service in their cities, with 982 adding that competition had forced Bell to improve its own service.   Bell had been promoting itself as a monopoly provider on the grounds that only a monopoly system would allow telephone users in different cities or different parts of a town to talk with each other.   Yet Vail knew that system interconnects were fast becoming technologically feasible, & many scoffed at the company's argument.   Something had to be done..."

1986 April
Max L. Carey & Kim L. Hazelbaker _Monthly Labor Review_
Employment growth in the temporary help industry: Body shopping
pdf
"The number of employees rose by 70% from 1982 November to 1984 November, making the industry the fastest growing among those with employment over 50K...   Average annual employment in the temporary help industry grew from about 340K in 1978 to 695K in 1985, an increase of 104%...   Data on the number of workers supplied by job shops are not available, but some industry observers estimate that it may have been as high as 150K in 1985...   The use of temporary workers may be particularly attractive to organizations with high fringe-benefit costs.   [Donald Mayhall and Kristin Nelson, The Temporary Help Supply Service and the Temporary Labor Market (Salt Lake City, UT, Olympus Research Corporation, 1982 December 14).]   One of the more pronounced trends in labor costs over the last several years has been the increase in the relative importance of employer-paid benefits.   For example, between 1981 June and 1985 December, wages increased 27.0%, but total compensation costs, including employer costs for employee benefits, rose 29.2%.   [Employment Cost Index-1985 December, BLs News Release, 1985 January 28.   The trend of larger increases in benefits than wages reversed in 1985, when wages were up 4.4%, compared with 4.3% for total compensation.]   Traditionally, temporary employees [are paid] fewer benefits than permanent employees and therefore lower benefit costs."

1986 April
Wayne J. Howe _Monthly Labor Review_
The business services body shopping industry sets pace in pseudo-employment growth
pdf
"Industries which provide services to businesses for a fee or on a contractual basis have had rapid gains in employment growth over the last decade, especially firms supplying computer and data processing services and temporary help; expansion is expected to continue."
 

1986 November
Wayne J. Howe _Monthly Labor Review_
Temporary help workers (i.e. bodies shopped): who they are, what jobs they hold
pdf
"These workers are disproportionately female, young, and black; they are more likely to work part time and in clerical and industrial help jobs."

1986
"accuracy_it"
Independent contractors
"The issue of 'independent contractors' has been boiling over since the IRS came up with rule 1706 back in 1986.   It meant the rise of body shops hiring people because companies didn't want to deal with rule 1706.   They left that to the [body shops].   And with that the fall of true independent contractors who had to create a corporation in order to get contractor status."
 

1987-02-10
Clint Bolick _Cato Institute_
The Age Discrimination In Employment Act: Equal Opportunity or Reverse Discrimination?

1987 December
John Tschetter _Monthly Labor Review_
Producer services (i.e. body shopping) industries: Why are they growing so rapidly?
pdf
"Does the hefty post-war growth of some service industries mean that manufacturers are cutting over-head by farming out activities once performed in house?   Analysis of data shows this to be an unlikely explanation for the growth of producer services industries."

1987
Ron Paul _Freedom Under Siege_/_Daily Paul_
A Definition of Individual Rights

1987
Jim Ludwick _The Missoulian_
Job-hunt rules strip liberty from us all
"It started last week.   Throughout the country, illegal aliens stepped forward as the US Immigration and Naturalization Service launched an amnesty program under a federal law signed in November.   Legal status is being offered to those who have lived here illicitly since before 1982 January.   The amnesty program will help clean the slate for an upcoming crack-down on more recent arrivals.   And it is that crack-down -- not the amnesty -- which will have the more significant effect.   For the first time, job-seeking US citizens will be asked to show documents proving they are not illegals.   And therein we find the truly dark side of the program that will affect the civil liberties of every American in order to make things easier for Mexican-watching federal employees, who complain they can't control the tired, poor and huddled masses yearning to move north.   World history is a catalog of troubled societies that repeatedly come up with the same wrong answer: Give more power to the cops.   And that is the essence of America's new plan.   In this case, since the cops are having trouble collaring the guilty, society is shifting the burden of proof, requiring the not-guilty to prove they are innocent.   No doubt, that will make things easier for the gun-toting bureaucrats who watch our borders.   And starting in June, every business manager who wants to hire someone will be enlisted to help; employers will have to view the documents delivered by job-seekers, then will have to keep records to occasionally display to authorities searching for the not-proven-innocent.   It isn't right.   Proponents see the system as a way of dealing with an extremely difficult problem.   But regardless of the problems facing a society, there are a couple of good, standard rules for reining in excessive police power.   One rule is that people shall be given the benefit of the doubt; they shall never have to prove their innocence, but shall be assumed to be innocent until there is evidence of guilt.   Another rule is that people shall not be brow-beaten with questions that dare self-incrimination.   Those rules must not be forgotten, no matter how loudly bureaucrats whine about needing more power to do their jobs.   That's what they said about money, and look where it got us [a reference to the soaring inflation which has now made a dollar worth about 4.5% of what it was worth when the Federal Reserve was created in 1913].   And here's a revolutionary thought that apparently hasn't occurred to our leaders: The tail doesn't wag the dog.   The government shouldn't command the job market.   If a company is operating honestly and decides to deal in good faith with an honest job candidate, that situation is good, not bad.   There is no need for the government to step in with nosey requests for proof of the innocence of people who are accused of nothing.   There is no need to add to the red tape already facing employers or to expand their legal jeopardy for dubious reasons.   Chances are, the next time you look for a job, no one will think you are an illegal alien.   Chances are, your future boss won't be thrilled about the paper-work and won't have any intrinsic interest in the documents you will be asked to produce.   Chances are, it will never occur to anyone that you might have slipped across the Mexican border, originally hoping to cheat an American out of a scuzzy job requiring little education and no command of the language.   But it won't matter what anybody thinks.   What will matter is that employers will have been pressed into the service of the federal bureaucrats.   It will matter whether you have the right pieces of paper to prove you did not commit a crime that no one ever accused you of in the first place.   it will matter that you have lost a measure of your liberty, and it will matter that the federal government thinks it should intercede every time a US citizen seeks a job.   This should be stopped."
 

"[H]oarded sums of money do not lie idle, whether they are regarded from the social or from the individual point of view.   They serve to satisfy a demand for money just as much as any other money does." --- Ludwig von Mises 1934 _The Theory of Money & Credit_ pg 171

1989 May
Robert A. Rivers _Technology Employment_
Conference Board Help Wanted Index Confirms Timing & Level of UnEmployment

1989
_National Science Foundation/ Policy and Research Analysis_
"A growing influx of foreign PhDs into U.S. labor markets will hold down the level of PhD salaries to the extent that foreign students are attracted to U.S. doctoral programs as a way of immigrating to the U.S.A.   A related point is that for this group the PhD salary premium is much higher [than it is for Americans], because it is based on BS-level pay in students' home nations versus PhD-level pay in the U.S.A...   [If] doctoral studies are failing to appeal to a large (or growing) percentage of the best citizen baccalaureates, then a key issue is pay...   A number of [the Americans] will select alternative career paths...   For these baccalaureates, the effective premium for acquiring a PhD may actually be negative."
 

1990 June
_Commission on the Skills of the American Work-Force_/_National Center for Education and the Economy_
America's Choice: high skills or low wages! (pdf 40MB)
"[pg 15] Since 1969, real average weekly earnings in the United States have fallen by more than 12%.   This burden has been shared unequally.   The incomes of our top 30% of earners increased while hos of the other 70% spiraled downward.   In many families, it now takes 2 people working to make ends meet, where one was sufficient in the past...   50% of our population is employed compared with 40% in 1973...   We can no longer grow substantially just by adding new workers...   The new high performance forms of work organization..., [rather] than increasing bureaucracy...reduce it by giving front-line workers more responsibility.   [pg 17] Workers are asked to use judgment and make decisions...   While businesses everywhere complained about the quality of their applicants, few talked about the kinds of skills acquired in school.   The primary concern of more than 80% of employers was finding workers with a good work ethic adn appropriate social behavior: 'reliable', 'a good attitude', 'a pleasant appearance', 'a good personality'...   only 5% of employers were concerned about a skilled shortage...   More than 70% of the jobs in America will not require a college education by the year 2000.   These jobs are the back-bone of our economy, and the productivity of workers in these jobs will make or break our economic future...   [pg 18] Two factors stand in the way of producing a highly educated work-force: We lack a clear standard of achievement and few students are motivated to work hard in school.   One reason that students going right to work after school [and those going through college] have little motivation to study hard is that they see little or no relationship between how well they do in school [and on the job] and what kind of job they can get after school [and what compensation they are likely to receive]."

1990-04-17
Rob Peglar
The ETA Saga: How to mis-manage a company according to Control Data Corporation

1990-09-07
Andrew J. Cowin _Heritage Foundation_
Campaign Finance "Reform" that Protects Incumbents
"in 1974... 87.7% of House members who sought re-election won re-election.   By 1988 it had become almost impossible for a House member seeking re-election to lose; that year, 98.5% were re-elected."

1990 Fall
Alan Fechter _PhDs_/_The Bridge_
Engineering Shortage and Short-Fall Myths & Realities
 

1991 January
Roger A. Rosenblatt, M.D. & Denise M. Lishner, M.S.W. _Western Journal of Medicine_
Surplus or shortage? Unraveling the physician supply conundrum.
"Despite the lack of consensus on the adequacy of America's physician supply, the basic statistics are not in doubt...   The number of medical schools increased from 87 to 126 between 1963 and 1980, and the number of medical graduates more than doubled during that same period.   As a consequence, the relative supply of physicians has risen from 150 per 100K in 1970 to 225 per 100K in 1986...   A typical HMO has a staffing level of about 120 physicians per 100K population, only about half of that in the 'first compartment' or fee-for-service sector and much lower than the physician-population ratio projected for the 21st century...   The number of medical students in the United States doubled in the past 25 years, from 7,081 in 1960 to 16,318 in 1985.   Although the number of applicants to medical school rose commensurately until 1973, the applicant pool actually declined until leveling out in 1990... in 1983, well over 100K foreign graduates were practicing in this country, accounting for more than a fifth of the total physician supply...   [citing] Swanson AG: US medical school applicants and matriculants, 1960-1985 and beyond, In Ginzberg E (Ed): From Physician Shortage to Patient Shortage: The Uncertain Future of Medical Practice.   Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1986.   Mulhausen R, McGee J: Physician need: An alternative projection from a study of large, prepaid group practices. Conn Med 1989; 5:293-298.   Beeson PB: Making medicine a more attractive profession. J Med Educ 1987; 62:116-125.   Sandrick K: US MD glut limits demand for FMG physicians. Hospitals 1988 Feb 5, pp 67-69."
 

1991-03-08
_GAO_
Workers at Risk: Increased Numbers in Contingent Employment (i.e. Bodies Shopped)
"In the past, nearly all employed Americans worked full-time for a single employer, but that pattern is changing. Many workers currently are employed in part-time, temporary, contract, and other types of flexible work arrangements... self-employed, leased employees, and workers in the business services sector... Non-traditional work arrangements offer immediate benefits, such as increased flexibility for both employers and employees and labor cost savings for employers."

1991 March
Chris Tilly _Monthly Labor Review_
Reasons for the continuing growth of part-time employment
pdf
"The rise in the share of these workers appears to be driven by employer demand for scheduling flexibility and a work force that commands lower compensation.   This article examines the long-term growth of part-time employment, including the effect of growing demand for such workers from employers."
 

"Though we all crave security and a sense of an assured tomorrow there really is no sure way to achieve that." --- R. Berel Wein

1991-10-28

1991-10-28
Jeffrey Mervis _Scientist_
Congress Presses Probe Into NSF Prediction Of Scientist Shortage
"[Peter] House based his analysis on the demographic fact that the size of the U.S. college-age population had peaked in the early 1980s and was expected to drop sharply through most of the 1990s.   He assumed that the percentage of students graduating with science and engineering-related degrees -- historically between 4% and 5% -- would remain steady into the next century.   And he made the number of science graduates in the period 1984-1986, a record-high level, a surrogate for future demand.   Based on those assumptions, he calculated that the U.S. would produce 675K fewer B.S. graduates trained as scientists and engineers than it needed by 2006...   But that number, first put forth in a 1987 internal NSF document, is now under attack.   Statisticians have questioned the assumptions that under-pin the analysis, as well as the choice of factors used (The Scientist, 1991 April 29, page 1; and 1991 May 13, page 1).   Others are worried that [Peter House's] conclusion goes beyond the existing data.   And many labor economists don't believe that the supply of scientists can be determined independent of the market demand for their services; they question the value of any prediction that tries to separate the two."

1991
Murray N. Rothbard _Ludwig von Mises Institute_
The Struggle Over Egalitarianism Continues: Freedom, Inequality, Primitivism, and the Division of Labor

1991
_Texas_
Texas Public Edcuational Grant Funding to Community Colleges
"To offset the cost of tuition to the students least able to pay, institutions are required to set aside a percentage of the tuition revenue for the Texas Public Educational Grants (TPEG) and emergency loans.   The present set aside rate is 25 cents out of each resident student's hourly tuition charge for academic courses and 6% of the hourly tuition charge for vocation-technical courses...   The federal government is the major provider of financial aid, awarding about 75% of all aid dollars or about $20G nationwide in the 1988-1989 school year...   The colleges receive funding from 6 sources.   The 3 major sources -- state appropriations (45%), local taxes (20%), and tuition and fees (15%) -- make up approximately 80% of the revenue.   The remaining 20% is from federal funds (8%), auxiliary income (6%), and miscellaneous revenue (6%)."
 

"If we wish to make democracy permanent in this country let us abide by the fundamental principles laid down in the Constitution.   Let us see that the state is the servant of its people and that the people are not the servants of the state." --- Robert A. Taft

1992-04-08
Billy E. Reed _American Engineering Association_
Projections of Science & Engineering Personnel Requirements
"AEA is the only engineering association dedicated exclusively to the professional needs and concerns of the U.S. engineering community.   Among these concerns is what we have termed Engineering Shortage Propaganda or ESP.
  AEA believes this nation's engineers are a valuable resource and as such should be nurtured...   Working level engineers consider the National Science Foundation a very anti-engineer organization...   For example, in 1983, the American Engineering Association was working to require foreign engineering students to return to their homeland before being granted permanent residence status to remain here to work.   Our amendment was to be introduced by the Sam B. Hall of Texas and during one conversation with his immigration aide I was told, 'The pressure against this amendment is incredible.   Every member of the Fortune 500 as well as the National Science Foundation has been lobbying us to drop the amendment.'.   After more discussion, I was told representative Hall's office had received several calls from people within the NSF who indicated Erich Bloch, the then Director of NSF, had asked them to call...
  Typical of the predictions of engineer shortages was perhaps the most widely quoted 'source' of recent times, the American Electronics Association [AeA] survey which gained prominence in 1983 [which declared] there was going to be a shortage of engineers [after] surveying themselves...   In early 1986 Pat Hill Hubbard of AeA finally admitted 'the electrical engineering shortage no longer exists'...   The 1986 May 12 issue of Electronic Engineering Times carried a story which makes the following statements: 'A high-ranking National Science Foundation official (Nam Suh) told engineering vice presidents here last week that America engineers are over-paid and less productive than their foreign counter-parts...   In his speech... Suh said there is a shortage of engineers, a contention with which few engineering groups concur...'...   He told EE Times afterward, 'We need to improve the quality of them and the number of them.'...
  If you believe academia and corporate management, there has been a 'crisis level' engineering shortage for the last 45 years.   The following quotes illustrate my point: 'Since 1947 the number of scientists and engineers employed has gone from 575K to 900K...   Engineers now start at $400 per month in contrast to less than $250 nine years ago...'...   'The most challenging aspect of the problem lies in the fact that today only 16% of university students major in science and engineering, down from 25% since 1950...'...   This quote came from Forbes Magazine 1981 May 11 quoting from an article that appeared there in 1956...   For the entire decade that I have been involved in these issues, we have not produced enough engineers in our schools according to management and academia, yet the Bureau of Labor Statistics has indicated that some 20% of each year's graduating class never enter the engineering work-force...
  In late March of 1992 the CNN financial show 'Money Line' quoted the latest version of this report suggesting we are facing a crisis level shortage of engineers by the year 2010 or so.   Less than a week later Money Line also ran a story about the difficult time this year's crop of college graduates were having finding a job.   One of the professions spot-lighted as having the toughest time finding work was engineering...   To the best of my knowledge we have never had a 'current' shortage of engineers, they have always been 5 or 10 years or more in the future and seem to appear at about the same time as new immigration legislation.
  Economics 101 teaches us if a commodity is in short supply the price increases.   Engineering salaries have been virtually flat, in terms of common dollars, since at least the mid-1960s.   Compare the salaries of engineers to doctors over the last 30 years.   There is not now, nor has there ever been a shortage of engineers...
  [During] the early 1970s... between 60K and 100K engineers and scientists were unemployed...   Remember the early 1980s when the universities were lobbying for money to expand our engineering schools, turning away domestic students and at the same time were recruiting over-seas for students?...   High school students were enticed to enroll in engineering only to find they were unable to get jobs upon graduation, older engineers were laid off and salaries failed to keep up with inflation."

1992-04-11
Arthur Higbee _International Herald Tribune_
Poking Holes in the Myth About a Scientist Shortage
"In fact, witnesses said, the shortage that was to have begun a few years ago never materialized.   Indeed, there is now such a surplus of scientists and engineers that unemployment rates in some fields far exceed those for the country as a whole."

1992-04-18
_New Scientist_
Skill shortages in the USA is a myth

1992-04-28
_GAO_
Immigration and the Labor Market: Non-Immigrant Alien Workers in the United States
"The H-l class was created in 1952 to assist U.S. employers who 'needed' workers temporarily.   The position an H-1 non-immigrant was to fill was required to be a temporary one.   In 1970, the law was amended to allow an H-1 non-immigrant to fill a permanent position, although the individual H-1 alien's period of stay in the United States was still required to be temporary...   Aliens who were entitled to an employment-based immigrant status under previous law were faced with waiting periods from 1 to 10 years before immigrant visas could be made available to them (not counting the time required to process the paperwork to legalize their admission to the United States after an Immigrant visa was issued)...   The H-1 class we studied was abolished by the combined provisions of the Immigration Nursing Relief Act of 1989 and the 1990 Immigration Act.   It was replaced by 7 non-immigrant classes, 5 of which are designed to accommodate (and more closely regulate) the entry of aliens who are entertainers, athletes, artists, and in similar occupations (one of which includes aliens with 'extraordinary ability' in sciences, business, or education).   The other 2 classes are for (1) aliens with a 'specialty occupation' and (2) alien nurses...   The Armed Forces Immigration Adjustment Act of 1991 (Pubiic Law 102-110) generally delayed the implementation of the new O and P classes (for aliens seeking non-immigrant admission as artists, entertainers, athletes, or fashion models) until 1992-04-01.   Persons in these occupations were admitted as class H-1B non-immigrants in the meantime, under the rules in effect for that class as of 1991-09-30.   On 1992-04-01, provisions of the Miscellaneous and Technical Immigration and Naturalization Amendments of 1991 (Public Law 102-232), which changed some provisions relating to the O and P non-immigrant clauses, became effective.   We have included the provisions of this law in our discussion of how the 1990 act is iikeiy to affect non-immigrant...   The L- 1 class was created in 19 70 to assist international companies in temporarily transferring certain of their employees to the United States to continue their work...   First, some U.S. business representatives and members of the Congress believe that the recent increases in H-1 admissions have, in some part, been caused by the delays of 1 to 10 years experienced by qualified aliens in becoming employment-based immigrants, and that increasing the annual number of employment-based immigrant visas from 54K to 140K will alleviate some of these demands.   Second, the 1990 act allows some aliens to more easily qualify for both non-immigrant and immigrant visas.   The annual 54K limit under previous law was distributed equally between 2 employment-based immigrant preference classes, termed the third and sixth preferences.   These 27K preference class limits included the immigrant's spouse and children.   The third preference class was comprised of 'members of the professions or persons of exceptional ability in the arts and sciences'.   The sixth preference was 'workers in skilled or unskilled occupations in which laborers are in short supply in the United States'.   The 136,325 aliens who became immigrants under these preferences because of their labor market skills during the period 1984-1989 (not including their spouses and children) numbered less than half of the 292,886 H-1 and L-1 non-immigrant visas issued during that same period...   H-1A nurses...   The INS representatives we interviewed told us that there are approximately 1.2M records for H-1 and L-1 non-immigrants currently in the NIIS data base covering the period from 1983 to mid-1991, and only about 770K (approximately 65%) can be readily 'matched' -- that is, the record of admission to the United States can be matched with a record of departure...   For example, we found that approximately 84 percent of the H-1 admissions between 1985 and 1987 could be linked to matched H-1 departure records.   For admissions in 1990, however, the percentage of matches had declined to about 42%.   For L-1 admissions, matches were approximately 88% of admissions between 1985 and 1987 but decreased to about 51% of 1990 admissions.   However, H-1 and L-1 non-immigrants still in the United States do not account for alI unmatched records...   approximately 93% of L-1 and H-1 non-immlgrants leave the United States within 1 year.   (They can, of course, return; these data reflect onJ the length of an individual stay.)   The extent to which the actual lengths of stay of L 1 and H- 1 non-immigrants are interrupted by multiple entrles into and departures from the United States is not well understood...   For the 3 years we analyzed, the estimated average annual length of stay for single-entry H-1 non-immigrants ranged from 165 to 175 days, or less than 6 months.   For single-entry L-1 non-immigrants, the average annual length of stay was between 199 and 208 days, or between 6.5 and 7 months.   For multiple-entry H-1 non-immigrants, the estimated average total length of stay (covering all periods of admission to the United States) ranged from 13 to 14 months; for L-1 non-immigrants, the range was 18 to 20 months...   relatively few (55,857, or about 3%) of the 1,830,275 aliens who adjusted to immigrant status during the period 1982-89 did so from H-1 or L-1 status.   Viewed against the total immigration of 3,917,482 during that same period, the 55,857 figure is even smaller-about 1.4%. (See table 4.1.)   Of these 55,857 adjustments, 70% were by H-1, and the remaining 30% by L-1, non-immigrants...   During the period 1984-89, however, this overall percentage [H-1 and L-1 visa holders who convert to immigrant status] is 15.5%.   Specifically, during this period, there were 211,697 H-1 visas issued and 32,487 adjustments (15.3%) by H-1 non-immigrants, and 81,189 L-1 visas issued and 12,849 adjustments (15.8%) by L-1 non-immigrants.   (The number of H-1 and L-1 visas issued during the 1982-1983 period was not available.)...   The total annual number of adjustments to immigrant status by H-1 non-immigrants has increased regularly from 3,327 in 1982 to 6,409 in 1989.   L-1 adjustments have been much less variable and of smaller volume (averaging 2,079 annually), but they have decreased slightly each year since 1985...   The H-1 class we studied was abolished by the combined provisions of the Immigration Nursing Relief Act of 1989 and the 1990 act and was replaced by 7 new non-immigrant classes: H-1A (nurse), H-1B ('specialty occupation'), O-1, O-2, and P-1 to P-3, as shown in table 5.1...   The 1990 act abolished the definition of class H-1B non-immigrants as those of distinguished merit and ability and replaced it with that of an ahen who performs services in a 'specialty occupation'...   H-1A [and H-1B] Up to 5 years; 6 years under 'extraordinary circumstances'...   The spouses and children of principal aliens in these classes are admitted separately under non-immigrant classes H-4 (which existed under previous law), O-3, and P-4 (both created under the 1990 act) for the length of stay of the principal alien, and they are not allowed to work in the United States...   Under the Miscellaneous and Technical Immigration and Naturalization Amendments of 1991, the 'distinguished merit and ability' standard haa been retained only for fashion models [!?!?!?] entering the country under H-11B visas...   The H-1A class, like the H-1 class before it, has no numerical limits...   Class O-1 covers aliens of 'extraordinary ability' in the arts, sciences, education, business, or athletics that has been demonstrated by 'sustained national or international acclaim'.   Class O-1 non-immigrants are, therefore, likely to be international 'super stars' in a variety of fields whose name recognition and documented accomplishments qualify them for admission...   the 1990 act increased the length of stay for [L-1A] managers and executives from 5 to 7 years and extended petitioning qualifications to companies offering international accounting services...   there were significant increases in (1) allocations of [total] employment-based immigrant visas, from 54K to 140K annually (which should reduce waiting periods), and (2) 'per-country' limits for employment-based immigrants, from 4K under previous law to more than 10K under the 1990 act...   Specifically, an approved labor attestation or labor condition application will not necessarily prove that there are no U.S. workers available...   Under the 1990 act, DOL is required to establish a pilot program during 1992-94 to determine 'labor shortages or surpluses' in up to 10 defined occupations in the United States based on 'labor market and other information'."
 

1992-05-02
_Free Library_
NSF shortage study called "bad science"
"A 1987 National Science Foundation (NSF) report forecasting a 'shortfall' of 692K scientists and engineers in the United States by 2010 is unfounded and untrue, scientists told a congressional subcommittee hearing April 8 in Washington, DC.   Although NSF never published the report, it was widely circulated throughout the organization in draft form.   Furthermore, former NSF director Erich Bloch cited the study in numerous speeches, said representative Howard Wolpe (D-MI), chairman of the investigations and oversight subcommittee of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology...   Report author Peter House testified that his predictions were purely hypothetical and intended solely to indicate the number of future graduates with science and engineering majors.   The study did not consider demand for those degree holders, conceded [Peter House], who serves as deputy director of NSF's office of planning and assessment.   'We did not do a market analysis that related to jobs.', he said...   'If we produced more engineers, there would be no work for them to do.', said Richard A. Ellis, director of manpower studies at the American Association of Engineering Societies in Washington, DC."

1992
Edward Yourdon _The Decline and Fall of the American Programmer_ pg 1
(quoted in CPSR 1993-09-06 review)
"By the end of the decade, I foresee massive unemployment among the ranks of American programmers, systems analysts, and software engineers.   Not because fifth generation computers will eliminate the need for programming, or because users will begin writing their own programs.   No, the reason will be far simpler:   International competition will put American programmers out of work, just as Japanese competition put American automobile workers out of work in the 1970s."
CPSR == Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
 

"Implicit in the term 'national defense' is the notion of defending those values and ideals which set this Nation apart...   It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of one of those liberties... which makes the defense of the Nation worthwhile." --- Earl Warren supremes in US v Robel

1993-02-28
A battle erupted near Waco, Texas, when Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents attacked the Branch Davidians at their church home; 4 agents and 6 Davidians were killed that day as a 51-day siege began.
 

1993-04-14
G. Pascal Zachary _Wall Street Journal_/_New America Media_
Black-Hole Opens in Scientist Job Rolls
 

1993-05-17
Gene A. Nelson _Young Scientists' Network_
DoL to essentially eliminate alien labor certification
"Additional references, available in your library are: 'Black Hole Opens in Scientist Job Rolls' The Wall Street Journal, 1993 April 14, p. B-1,'Chemical Job Surplus Alleged - Finding Riles Scientists and Congress', Chemical & Engineering News, 1993 April 26, p. 6, and 'Labor Dept. List Sparks Tech Job Fears' and 'Fed Plan to Ease Aliens' Hiring Slammed' Electronic Engineering Times 1993 April 26, p. 1 and 1993 May 10, pp. 68-70 and 'Open: Jobs for Specialists, Wanted: Foreign Workers' The Washington Post, 1993 May 7, page A-21. See also 'Scientific Ph.D. Problems' by David Goodstein in The American Scholar, 1993 Spring, pp. 215-220."

1993-05-20
Gene A. Nelson _Young Scientists' Network_
Letter to Department of Labor

"The mushrooming of surveillance has been explained by the sense of panic and crisis felt throughout the government during this period of extremely vocal dissent, large demonstrations, political and campus violence, and what at the time seemed the inauguration of a period of wide-spread anarchy.   While officials... suggested that these crises justified the surveillance, they failed to recognize that the rights guaranteed by the constitution are constant and unbending to the temper of the times..." --- Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights 1973

1993-06-03
Pete Carey _San Jose Mercury News_ pg A9
High-Tech Workers Bitter Over Shortages Myth: Soft Labor Market, Immigration Growth Collide in Work-Place
"Gene Nelson, a physicist who devotes much of his time to combatting the myth of skills shortages in the sciences, still remembers the shock he experienced when he first read about the Immigration Act of 1990.   'We already had a very soft labor market for science and engineering, and here are these people boosting potential science and technology immigration.', said Nelson, a 41-year-old with a Ph.D. who teaches part time for $120 a week at Cuyahoga Community College..."

"[T]he time has come to recognize the UN for the anti-American, anti-freedom organization that it has become.   The time has come for us to cut off all financial help, withdraw as a member, & ask the UN to find a HQ location outside the US that is more in keeping with the philosophy of the majority of voting members, some place like Moscow or Peking." --- Barry Goldwater 1971-10-26 _Congressional Record_ pg S16764

1993-08-30
Thom Geier _US News & World Report_
Down-Sizing Toll Keeps Going Up
"the number of permanent job reductions announced by big companies this year to nearly 400K.   That's enough to offset almost 2 months' worth of new-job creation, which so far in 1993 is puffing along at a lack-luster rate of about 160K positions per month.   For many, the job market looks no better than it did during the recession, which technically ended in 1991 March.   The out-placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas is advising more laid-off employees now than during the recession.   And 41% of consumers today say jobs are hard to get; only 36% said that during the recession's deepest point.   'Job security is a thing of the past.', concludes David Wyss, research director at the economic-consulting firm DRI/McGraw-Hill."

"The Privacy Act, if enforced would be a pretty good thing.   But the government doesn't like it.   Government has an insatiable appetite for power, and it will not stop usurping power unless it is restrained by laws they cannot repeal or nullify.   There are mighty few laws they cannot nullify." --- Sam Ervin (author of the Privacy Act of 1974)

1993-09-06
CPSR review of Ed Yourdon _Decline and Fall of the American Programmer_
"'I have not been impressed with the energy level of the average programmer in the vast majority of DP [Data Processing] shops I've visited in the United States.   Most of them have a difficult time remaining in an upright position all day.   I'm convinced that many organizations play muzak to hide the sound of snoring.' [pg 6] -- and this just after citing his consulting comrade, Capers Jones, claiming the average American programmer puts in 50-hour work weeks...
  He [Ed Yourdon] describes a test given by Sackman, Erickson, and Grant back in 1968 to 12 experienced programmers.   They found wide variance with the best person in the group finishing coding 28 times faster than the worst person, and the best program was approximately 10 times more efficient (in terms of memory and CPU cycles).   There was no correlation with years of programming experience or scores on standard programming aptitude tests.
  By contrast, for programming teams, Capers Jones reports that development and maintenance costs of projects using experienced people were half that of projects using inexperienced people...
  Companies are opting NOT to invest in their 'peopleware'.   Lay-offs, out-sourcing and the tendency toward contracting programming labor are what we are getting instead.   CASE tools are a large capital investment and you can hire multiple cheap Indian, Irish, FOC's (Fresh Out of College) or whatever programmers for the same price -- and not be stuck with an obsolete shelf-full of dated manuals and software 6 months later.   (The relative high-cost of CASE is why little is done with this technology in India, Yourdon writes).   Have labor make the capital investment themselves either by self-financing education and then getting hired or have some foreign government subsidize a programmer acquiring current skills.   That Yourdon discusses little these tendencies is a major omission."
CPSR == Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility

1993-09-06
"Q: What is the difference between Jurassic Park and IBM?
A: One is a high-tech theme park for dinosaurs and the other is a movie by Steven Spielberg. Ba-bing!
Q: What is the difference between Jurassic Park and M$?
A: One is a high-tech theme park dominated by expensive, nasty, hungry, predatory monsters that will destroy anything they can get their teeth into... and the other is a movie by Stephen Spielberg." --- CPSR humor
CPSR == Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
 

"The caveman had the same natural resources at their disposal as we have today, & the difference between their standard of living and ours is a difference between the knowledge they could bring to bear on those resources & the knowledge used today." --- Thomas Sowell

1993-11-15
Leslie Helm _Los Angeles Times_ pg A1
Creating High-Tech Sweat-Shops

1993 November
fastest computers LinPack bench-mark
 

1994-02-11
_MIT Tech_
AT&T to Cut Up to 15K Positions
"AT&T, the nation's largest long-distance carrier, yesterday announced plans to eliminate 14K to 15K jobs over the next 2 years.   AT&T's plan, designed to save the company at least $900M a year, is the latest example of the massive down-sizing underway in the communications industry.   Communications companies eliminated 44,314 jobs in January alone, compared with 50K jobs for all of 1993, according to the out-placement firm of Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc."

1994 February
_Migration News_
H-1B, Europe, Illegal Immigration Into Russia, Red China Sterilization, Thailand Considering Amnesty for Illegal Aliens
archive

"In 1900 only 5% to 10% of the US population graduated from HS.   By 1940, 5% to 10% went to college.   By 1983... 80% of the population graduated from HS & over 60% of all HS graduates attended college." --- Robert E. Kelley 1985 _The Gold Collar Worker_ pg 11

1994 March
Sally Lerner _Futures_
The Future of Work in North America: Good Jobs, Bad Jobs, Beyond Jobs
"Rapid technological change and the globalization of economic activity are re-structuring the North American economy, and with it the nature and future of work in the United States and Canada.   There is now a clear, though barely-articulated question as to whether secure, full-time, adequately-waged employment will be available to much of the North American work-force, at least over the next 30-60 years, or whether 'jobless growth', under-employment and 'contingent' employment will become the norm, as happened first in Britain and is increasingly the trend in other industrialized nations."

1994-03-20
Bill Varner _Gannett Suburban News-Papers_
Down-Shifting
"'Of the people who found new jobs last year, 74% moved to smaller companies.', said John Challenger, executive vice president of Challenger, Gray & Christmas inc., an international out-placement company based in Chicago.   'There were also a lot more entrepreneurs.   In the last quarter of 1993, 18% to 20% of the people who found new jobs went to work for themselves [i.e. remain unemployed].   Five years ago it was only 8% to 12%.'...   As the economy slipped into recession in the late 1980s, corporate loyalty declined.   Results of a Gallup Poll released in December showed that 29% of employees believe their co-workers do not have a strong sense of loyalty to their company.   'People are tired of being at the mercy of a corporation or the government.', said Roberta Jean Bryant."

1994 March
Robert W. Crandall _Maine Policy Review_/_University of Maine_ [unnatural monopoly]
Pricing issues in telecommunications
"There was a time when telecommunications was considered a 'natural monopoly'.   Today, scores of carriers actively compete for customers in voice, data, video and information services markets.   Even if the natural-monopoly diagnosis was correct in 1914, the year of the ('Kingsbury Commitment' by which AT&T sought refuge from anti-trust in federal government regulation; in 1934 the year in which the Federal Communications Act was passed; or even in 1949, the year in which the government first sued AT&T for monopolization, it surely is incorrect today.   Monopoly power may still exist, but it is far from 'natural'.   Rather, such monopoly exists either as a transitory phenomenon, awaiting imminent destruction by emerging competitive forces, or because of government regulation."
 

1994-06-20
Robert Zacher _Young Scientists' Network_
Full Unemployment Policy for American Ph.D Scientists
 

"The output of knowledge workers is at best difficult to quantify.   While counting the number of forms a clerk-typist prepares might be a valid performance measurement, it would be meaningless to count the number of drawings a drafter produces or the lines of code a programmer generates." --- Ira B. Gregerman 1981 _Knowledge Worker Productivity_ (quoted in Robert E. Kelley 1985 _The Gold Collar Worker_ pg 16)

1994 July
Gary Belsky _Money_
Escape from America: Citizens who leave the country
"From 1960 to 1976, 9 out of every 10 Americans who emigrated ended up in 1 of 7 countries -- Mexico, Germany, England, Canada, Japan, Australia and Israel.   Today many still head for those countries, but they also choose more diverse locales such as the Czech Republic, where the American expatriate population has soared to an estimated 20K from fewer than 100 in 1989, or Hong Kong, where American ranks have nearly doubled to 27K, from 14K in 1986...   In Money's poll, more than 2 out of 5 Americans ages 18 to 34 who have considered emigrating cite better economic opportunities as the reason...   And though the U.S. has rebounded smartly from recession, prospects are still bleak for those just entering the work force.   A recent study by the Collegiate Employment Research Institute at Michigan State University projects a meager 1% lift in hiring for the class of 1994 -- and that after a 35% drop over the past 5 years...   In fact, almost 1 in every 6 U.S. jobs pays below the poverty line for a family of 4, or $14,228 a year.   And many young Americans have soured on the Darwinian corporate culture in which 1.4M managers lost their jobs since 1990."

"The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for." --- Ludwig Wittgenstein (quoted in Richard Lederer 1991 _The Miracle of Language_ pg 3)

1994-08-02
_CPSR CPU_
Visa Reform: Not Enough New Programming Jobs Are Being Created
"CFVR argues that the U.S. is not generating enough programming jobs, whether through growth or attrition, to absorb recent graduates from U.S. universities...   In an early July posting to misc.jobs.misc, CFVR estimated the number of new programming jobs becoming available each year: 'The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that there are 550K computer programming jobs in the U.S., with a growth rate of 4.4% per annum...   The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that there are 156K computer and office repair jobs (which includes installation and maintenance of machinery), 282K computer equipment operators, 37K computer peripheral equipment operators, 565K computer programmers, and 463K system analysts.   This adds up to a total of 1.503M jobs in computer related fields.'...
  We have reported in every issue of CPU the massive lay-offs that have hit especially the mainframe and mini companies, but also the much smaller PC and software houses...   And companies aren't just exploiting the visa program to bring programmers here from India or France or Russia.   It is often easier to take the work over-seas...   If companies use visa workers, those workers should be paid at the same level as U.S. programmers, with the same benefits.   Commissions to the placement firms should be on top of the scale salaries that the contract employees get.   Severe penalties should be levied against companies that abuse contract employees, or that use contracting houses that abuse their contractors.   Foreigners of uncertain position in a strange land are easy targets of ill-treatment and low-wages.   (See, e.g., CPU.007 for complaints against Hewlett-Packard in its use of over-seas contractors)..."
CPSR == Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility

1994-08-08
Mitch Betts _IDG_/_ComputerWorld_
National ID system proposed for immigration job tracking
"During the past 20 years, privacy advocates have beaten back numerous proposals to create a national identification system...   Barbara Jordan... last week called for a national computer data-base that would allow employers to verify whether a job applicant is authorized to work in the U.S.A...   Legislative proposals for a national ID card were rejected in 1986 and 1990...   U.S. senator Alan K. Simpson (R-WY), a long-time supporter of a national ID card, predicted that election-minded senators will rush to attach the plan to any bill moving through the Senate this year, 'even if it's tacked on to a bloated cow bill'.   Indeed, senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said she plans to do exactly that."
 

"The great thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving." --- Oliver Wendell Holmes (quoted in Mark Skousen & Jo Ann Skousen 1993 _High Finance on a Low Budget_ pg 199)

1994-09-15
Kirk Ladendorf _Austin American-Statesman_ pg A1
H-1B Disputes
 

1994-09-19
David Goodstein _California Institute of Technology_/_NCAR 48 Symposium_/_Scientific American_
The Big Crunch:
"The period 1950-1970 was a true golden age for American science.   Young Ph.D's could choose among excellent jobs, and anyone with a decent scientific idea could be sure of getting funds to pursue it...   By now, in the 1990s, the situation has changed dramatically...   It didn't take long for American students to catch on to what was happening."
 

1994 October
David R. Kaspersin _Dynamic Recording_
The Down-Sizing and Demoralizing of the American Work-Force

"There are no bad books any more than there are ugly women." --- Anatole France (quoted in Richard Lederer 1991 _The Miracle of Language_ pg 167)

1994 November
fastest computers LinPack bench-mark
 

"It is with words as with sun-beams.   The more they are condensed, the deeper they burn." --- Robert Southey (quoted in Richard Lederer 1991 _The Miracle of Language_ pg 238)

1994-12-01

1994-12-02

1994-12-03

1994-12-04

1994-12-05

1994-12-05
Sharon Begley, Lucy Shackelford & Adam Rogers _NewsWeek_
Glut of Scientists: No PhDs Need Apply

1994-12-06

1994-12-07

1994-12-08

1994-12-09

1994-12-10

1994-12-11

1994-12-12

1994-12-13

1994-12-14

1994-12-15

1994-12-15
E.B. Baatz _CIO_
Down-Sizing Is Tough On Everyone
"Firings, lay-offs and reductions in force -- terms that reflect anguished cuts businesses make in times of financial stress -- have been replaced by down-sizing, re-engineering and right-sizing -- less threatening words that suggest the continual adjustments businesses make in order to maximize corporate health.   But whether employees are down-sized or fired, laid off or re-engineered out of a job, their pain remains the same...   Economists tell us that the 1991 recession hurt the working population as much as the Great Depression...   Big corporations announced over 615K job cuts in 1993, says John A. Challenger, an out-placement consultant with Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. based in Chicago.   In the first 9 months of 1994, another 418K jobs fell beneath the down-sizing ax."

1994
_The Standish Group International Inc._
CHAOS Report on IT Project Success & Failure
 

"The thing of which I have the most fear is fear." --- Michael E. Montaigne (1553-1592) (quoted in Marko Perko 1994 _Did You Know That...?_ pg 19)

1995-05-13

1995-05-13 13:41:44PDT (15:41:44CDT) (16:41:44EDT) (20:41:44GMT)
Tom Lowe
Corporate Lay-Offs
"Matt Murray 1995-05-04 _Wall Street Journal_ Amid record profits companies continue to lay off employees' pp A1 & A5: 'During the 1990-91 recession, when lay-offs were announced almost every day, workers around the nation were angry and anxious...   most employees assumed that the lay-offs would stop when the good times returned.   They were wrong.   While corporate profits were surging to record levels last year, the number of job cuts approached those seen at the height of the recession.   Corporate profits rose 11% in 1994, after a 13% rise in 1993, according to DRI/McGraw Hill, a Lexington, MA, economic consultant.   Meanwhile, corporate America cut 516,069 jobs in 1994, according to out-placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas in Chicago.   That is far more than in the recession year of 1990, when 316,047 jobs were eliminated, and close to the 1991 total of 555,292 jobs.'
  Roger Lowenstein 1995-05-04 _Wall Street Journal_ 'The 20% Club no longer is exclusive' pg C1: 'Once upon a time -- say, the year before last -- a company making a 20% return on equity was among the elite...   In the first quarter, the average ROE of the Standard & Poor's 500 companies hit 20.12%.   This figure (hot off the calculator from Salomon Brothers) represents the highest level of corporate profitability in the post-war era, and probably since the latter stages of the Bronze Age.'"
 

"The thing of which I have the most fear is fear." --- Michael E. Montaigne (1553-1592) (quoted in Marko Perko 1994 _Did You Know That...?_ pg 19)

1995-06-05

1995-06-05
William Massy of Stanford, Charles Goldman of RAND Corp., Stanford graduate students Marc Chun and Beryle Hsiao
Doctorate surplus in science and engineering continues
"Universities in the United States are producing about 25% more doctorates in science and engineering fields than the U.S. economy can absorb...   Economic models prepared by the group show that 'you can increase sponsored research by 10%, and while you are in the process of making that increase -- let's say you move it up at 2% a year for 5 years -- you surely will sop up the unemployment.', Massy said during a recent interview.   'The whole system will be expanding and people will get the kinds of jobs they were trained for.   However, as soon as you stop increasing it and go back to a steady state -- not a decrease but just stop increasing research funding -- all of a sudden the under-employment comes back.   In fact, it comes back worse than it was before because the whole system has scaled up.'   In an analysis of 13 science and engineering fields covering 210 doctorate-granting institutions and more than 1K educational institutions that employ people with doctorates, the researchers found that supply and demand do not work in the usual way to regulate the employment market.   In labor markets, when job opportunities decrease fewer people usually seek to enter the field in response to the reduced opportunities.   In the case of Ph.D.s, however, the researchers said, they found that 'neither departments nor prospective doctoral students take close accounting of the doctorate employment gap'.   Interviews with 300 faculty members on 19 campuses indicated that doctoral admission decisions 'are driven not by the output market [for doctoral degree holders] but by the academic department's own production needs' for teaching and research assistants, Massy said.   Teaching and research assistantships are temporary, part-time jobs for doctoral students that are normally thought of as the byproduct of producing doctorates.   'It's kind of the tail wagging the dog.', he said.   The only way to solve the long-term under-employment of doctoral degree holders in sciences and engineering, the researchers say, is for academic departments either to reduce the number of doctoral students they admit or to convince more potential Ph.D. candidates not to seek the degree.   Both are difficult to do, Massy said.   Faculty and administrators who make admissions decisions tend to admit their targeted number of doctoral students, regardless of changes in quality of applicants, he said.   'They do that because they must have the Ph.D. students for teaching assistants, for research assistants and because faculty have a sense, in certain places, that they really need Ph.D.s to keep intellectually alive.'   At his own School of Education, for example, Massy said, 'every faculty member believes that he or she should be able to admit 1 Ph.D. student a year.   Departments and schools have different numbers, but there is a sense that this is what we are entitled to as faculty.   It's part of our intellectual culture.'   The targets for Ph.D. admissions vary greatly with the type of institution and by field, he said.   In electrical engineering, the volume of sponsored research grants tends to drive the number of doctoral students needed to do the research, and that field has the highest number of doctoral students per faculty member at the institutions studied.   In other fields, such as mathematics, chemistry and economics, under-graduate enrollment is a greater influence on the number of doctoral students admitted because these departments are responsible for teaching many under-graduate general education courses, and the departments admit doctoral students to help teach those courses, Massy said.   'To put it bluntly, in departments where general enrollment is a problem, at least some kinds of institutions will have to change their mix to use more faculty and fewer TAs [teaching assistants] to teach under-graduate courses, because that has a dual effect: It reduces the number of doctoral students produced and it increases the demand for faculty', thereby creating higher numbers of permanent jobs for the doctoral students who are admitted.   The best place for this change to occur would be at the lowest-ranking doctoral-training departments, but faculties in these departments are not likely to make the change voluntarily, he said, because having fewer graduate students would tend to have a negative effect on their own careers.   It is more difficult for them to publish new research results without new graduate students and they most likely would have to spend more of their time teaching under-graduate courses than the advanced courses many prefer.   'It goes against a whole lot of forces.', Massy said.   Over-production may cease in time, he said, because of rising pressure on institutions of higher education to increase the quality of under-graduate education.   Some parents and students complain that under-graduates are too frequently taught by doctoral students rather than faculty...   Potential doctoral students also might apply in smaller numbers if they have better information on their permanent job prospects, he said.   In the absence of data, they may be too influenced by the success of their primary role models -- faculty members with their own research laboratories.   'If they only knew that a small fraction of the people who start off ever get there, it might make a difference at the margin.', Massy said.   Problems in providing such information result from the difficulties encountered in tallying the numbers of graduates who are actually employed after graduation in jobs that use their degrees.   Some data count temporary post-doctoral employment or 'nomadic' [contingent, body shop, temporary] employment as a lecturer as if the graduate had reached his or her goal, he said.   Other data sets merely count the total graduates who are employed.   Doctoral students are likely to have skills that will lead them to compete better than the average applicant for jobs, he said, even if those jobs are as taxi drivers...   over the long term and across all science and engineering fields, 3 of 4 doctoral degree holders eventually get jobs related to their degree qualifications.   The actual percentage varies by field, is dependent upon assumptions about the proportion of doctoral students from foreign countries who fill some of the jobs available in the United States, and can change temporarily when shortages occur in a given field.   'For the 5 engineering fields [studied], the employment runs between 25% and 50% of Ph.D. production under the assumption that half of the visa-holding graduates remain in the United States.', the researchers report.   'The employment gap remains positive, between 5% and 20% of total degrees, even if we assume that none of the foreign graduates remain.   If we want to characterize the gap for a lay audience, we would choose 25% of total degrees -- the low end of the 50% foreign retention range.   For the 5 engineering fields, this would imply that about 200 new Ph.D.s, on average per field, would fail to find suitable doctorate-level employment.'   The 25% who do not make it usually do get jobs for which they may be over-qualified."
 

1995 July
David A. MacPherson & Barry T. Hirsh _Journal of Labor Economics_ vol 13 #3 pp 426-471
Wages and Gender Composition: Why Do Women's Jobs Pay Less? (pdf)
 

"[I]t is now the moment... to recall what our country has done for each of us, & to ask ourselves what we can do for our country in return." --- Oliver Wendell Holmes 1884-05-30 at Keene, NH

1995-08-14

1995-08-14
Larry Richards _SoftPAC_
Companies Replacing American Workers With H-1Bs
"To demonstrate just how lax the current regulations are, I submitted an application to the Department of Labor in June asking for permission to hire 40 foreign programmers on H-1B visas at a rate of $4.50 an hour (25 cents above the minimum wage).   This application was approved and sent back to me in less than 2 weeks.   Because of these loop holes, an entire industry has sprung up composed of companies that specialize in hiring foreign programmers whom they contract out to clients seeking low cost labor."

1995-08-17

1995-08-17
_BLS_
New Data on Contingent and Alternative Employment (i.e. Body Shopping)
"Initial results from the survey show that, in 1995 February, between 2.7M and 6.0M workers -- a range of 2.2% to 4.9% of total employment -- were in contingent jobs...   The February survey also showed that 8.3M workers (6.7% of the total employed) said they were independent contractors, 2.0M (1.7%) worked 'on call', 1.2M (1.0%) worked for temporary help agencies, and 652K (0.5%) worked for contract firms that provided the worker's services to one customer at that customer's work-site...   an individual's employment arrangement could be both 'contingent' and fall into one of the alternative employment categories...   Under all three estimates, contingent workers were more than twice as likely as non-contingent workers (those who are not contingent even under the broadest estimate) to be young, that is, 16 to 24 years of age...   The services industry alone accounted for more than half of the contingent total but about a third of non-contingent workers.   The construction industry also accounted for a relatively large share of contingent workers.   This concentration notwithstanding, the proportion of workers within the services industry who were contingent ranged from 3.4% to 7.5%.   Similarly, only 4.5% to 8.4% of construction workers were contingent.   Contingent workers were concentrated in the professional; service; administrative support; and operator, fabricator, and laborer occupations.   The proportion of contingent workers who had health insurance from any source ranged from 57% to 65%, depending on the estimate chosen.   This was 17 to 25 percentage points lower than the proportion of non-contingent workers with health insurance...   The majority of contingent workers preferred to have permanent rather than temporary jobs..."

1995-08-28

1995-08-28
Keith Bradsher _NY Times_
Skilled workers watch their jobs migrate over-seas

1995 August
Gerald F. Scully
Income Extortion
 

1995-09-06
Kathryn Hoyle _BLS_
New survey reports on wages and benefits for temporary help services workers (bodies shopped)
"The pay of employees placed by the nation's temporary help services firms averaged $7.74 an hour in 1994 November... BLS found that many temporary help supply firms offer a package of employee benefits, including paid holidays, paid vacations, and health insurance, to workers who meet minimum qualifications.   However, few temporary workers actually receive these benefits, either because they fail to meet the minimum qualification requirements or, as in the case of insurance plans, they elect not to participate... Since a similar study in 1989, employment in the temporary help supply services industry has grown much more rapidly than in the rest of the economy. Over the 5-year period, the number of workers employed by the nation's temporary help supply firms rose by almost 350K or 43%... Computer Systems Analysts 1,779, average hourly earnings $28.75;... Computer Programmers 2,492, average hourly earnings $25.40;... Computer Operators and Printer Operators 4,217, average hourly earnings $10.63..."

1995-09-08
Raju Narisetti _Wall Street Journal_ pp A1, A4
Manufacturers Decry a Shortage of Workers While Rejecting Many

1995-09-09
Claudia Allen _NACE_
Starting Salaries for New Grads

Accounting	$27,926
Management	$25,711
Marketing	$25,400
Economics & Finance	$27,650
MIS	$31,053
IS	$31,960
Computer Science	$33,712
Computer Engineering	$34,941
EE Engineering	$36,049
Chemical Engineering	$39,880
Mechanical Engineering	$35,744
Industrial Engineering	$34,961
Civil Engineering	$30,618
Sociology	$21,675
Psychology	$21,110
Literature	$22,334
Nursing	$32,837
Pharmacy	$48,217

 

"[T]he prices of actual labor services are governed, like the prices of all other goods, by their values." --- Carl Menger 1871 _Principles of Economics_ (translated by James Dingwall & Bert F. Hoselitz) pg 171

1995-10-11

1995-10-11
_EE Times_
Industry complains of shortages while laying off 300K

1995-10-25

1995-10-25
Terry Barnhart _Network of Emerging Scientists_
Vocation vs. employment prospects
"CW makes some good points about not going into science as a career, points which I have taken and have largely believed through my own difficult time in finding employment in the field.   However, I cannot in good conscience warn someone off from science either.   Just as there are successful and happy Archaeologists, ancient historians and English professors, the fact that there are few jobs does not, in itself, constitute a good reason not to do what you love and are good at."

1995 October
_Monthly Labor Review_
contents

1995 October
Susan Houseman & Machiko Osawa _Monthly Labor Review_
Part-time and temporary employment in Japan
pdf
"The need for less costly labor and protection against fluctuations in labor demand has helped push up part-time and temporary employment in Japan.   This article discusses recent trends in part-time and temporary employment and the characteristics of these 'non-regular' workers and their employers in Japan.   It also looks at the role of the Japanese industrial relations system, public policies, and other factors in the development of part-time and temporary employment."

1995 October
John E. Bregger & Steven E. Haugen _Monthly Labor Review_
BLS introduces new range of alternative unemployment measures
pdf
"Some of the original BLS unemployment indicators, U-1 through U-7, have been retained as part of the new range, U-1 through U-6; several new measures make use of data heretofore unavailable from the CPS.   This article provides a brief history of the old range of alternative measures and reviews the impact of the redesigned CPS on the pre-1994 series, before introducing the new set of unemployment measures."
 

"In all cases where the king is party, the sheriff... ought first to signify the cause of his coming, & make request to open the doors." --- English court of 1603 (quoted in James Bovard 1995 _Shake-Down: How the Government Screws You from A to Z_ pg 82)

1995-11-16

1995-11-16
Farrell Kramer _AP_/_South Coast Today_
'Tis the season for lay-offs -- in droves
"From January to October of this year, 343K lay-offs were announced, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., a Chicago-based job placement firm.   October's 41K rank as the highest since May...   Stephen S. Roach, chief economist at Morgan Stanley & Co., the Wall Street investment firm, said that by year-end the number of lay-offs reported since 1991 March, when the economic recovery began, will be 2.5M.   'That's a carnage without precedent.', he said.   Overall employment has increased 8% during this recovery compared with 14% through a similar point in the prior 4 recoveries -- translating into 6.5M jobs that were never created, he said."

1995-11-27

1995-11-27
Scientists' Heated Debate on Immigration

1995-12-06

1995-12-06
_PakSearch_
Dollar holds mixed on beige book: November lay-off announcements up 45% from a year ago
"Challenger Gray and Christmas Inc, a placement firm, said 45% more lay-offs were announced this November than a year ago."

1995
NSF Finds Most S&E Degree Holders Employed in Non-S&E Occupations
Science Daily
"A new NSF Data Brief shows that the S&E work-force reached nearly 3.2M in 1995 - of which 83%, or 2.6M people, had received their highest degrees in an S&E field.   At the same time, however, about 4.7M people whose highest degrees were in S&E fields were working in non-S&E occupations."

1995 Winter
Wayne Harris _Research in Review_
Clocked Out
"A changing American work-place means pain for survivors on both sides of the desk.   The news blared from every media outlet worthy of the name: in 1994, the most productive workers on the planet hailed from the good old U.S. of A.   The proof: all the leading economic indicators showed new high-water marks in American employment and productivity, while inflation was tied to a rope...   'It really is bad out there.', says Dr. Pamela Perrewe, chair of FSU's management department in the university's College of Business.   'It's not quite as traumatic as the 1930s, but it's real bad.   Today, (one of the main concerns is that) there are no safety nets.   There once was an implicit tenure for employees in business organizations.   That's gone.'...   In the 1990s, of course, the mother of all stressors for American workers has been the ever-present specter of job elimination, the phenomenon that brings a special relevance to Perrewe's findings.   Between 1991 January and 1993 December, some 4.5M American workers lost jobs they had held more than 3 years, according to a survey released this Fall by the U.S. Department of Labor.   The carnage was nothing if not democratic, cutting equally across occupations, employment levels and geographic regions.   If anything, in fact, the ax fell heaviest among the better-paid.   Of the 4.5M workers who became emotional and financial casualties of the new, fiercely competitive global economy, more than 1.2M were managers and professionals.   Another 1.3M were technicians, sales-people and clerical workers.   Not only did not carrying a lunch bucket cease to be a guarantee of a stable career in the early 1990s, it made the possibility proportionately more dicey.   Relative to their representation in the corporate work force, managers and supervisors were almost twice as likely to get axed...   In _After the Layoff: Closing the Barn Door Before All the Horses Are Gone_ (Business Horizons, 1993), Perrewe and co-author Robert C. Ford argued convincingly that, initially, how laid-off employees are treated will have a major bearing on an organization's ability to keep surviving employees in the fold...   In the Department of Labor study, for example, an astounding 42% of the 4.5M laid-off employees received no written notification of their dismissal...   Though the downsizing and restructuring of the 1990s has exacted a huge toll in employee loyalty, most people still want to take pride in their work...   'In the long-term, firms that increased their training budgets after work force reductions were twice as likely to show increased profits and productivity as firms that cut their training expenses.'..."
 

1995
Pratap Chatterjee _Multi-National Monitor_
Invasion of the Body Shoppers
" The Texas-based Software Professionals Political Action Committee (SoftPAC) estimates that between 1990 and 1993, 50K temporary computer workers entered the United States and 100K computer professionals immigrated to the country.   During the same period, the number of unemployed computer professionals doubled to 104K.   'They compete unfairly with their low wages.', Doug Pfenninger, a Los Angeles programmer with 27 years experience, told the Los Angeles Times after losing several jobs to immigrant workers.   Pfenninger, who has worked for such leading aerospace companies as Rockwell International, Northrop and Lockheed, lost a job with Hughes Aircraft during a wave of cutbacks in 1992.   After losing his house, he took a contract job on a project for Hitachi America in Northern California.   After 3 months, he lost that job to a lower-paid foreign programmer.   Also bitter was Lou Citarella of Livingston, New Jersey, after he lost his $52K job at the American International Group (AIG) to an immigrant who he had trained.   AIG's immigrants were brought to the country by Syntel, a Bombay-based software company that specializes in bringing computer workers from India.   Most of the company's contracts are signed through its U.S. office in Troy, Michigan.   Its 300 employees work for such clients as AT&T, Xerox, Safeway and AIG.   Syntel's 1994 revenues were $1.3M, a 268% increase over the previous year.   The immigration of programmers set off a storm of protest in California from unemployed programmers as well as from anti-immigration groups like Californians for Population Stabilization, which sued HCL in 1993 for under-paying its programmers.   As a result of the law-suit, Hewlett-Packard agreed to cut some of its 'body shopping' and requires its contractors to provide proof of pay.   The U.S. government imposed visa restrictions in 1994 on foreign programmers, causing the percentage of 'on-site' programming sales conducted in U.S. offices to drop to 63% from 1993 to 1994.   During this period, the number of programmers allowed into the United States dropped from 2,000 to 1,092.   The Department of Labor investigated alleged abuses of foreign workers and issued fines in eight cases in 1993.   This year, the Labor Department fined Syntel, the company that helped put Citarella out of work, $117K for under-paying 40 Indian programmers.   The company has been suspended from bringing in new programmers for a year.   Syntel, which was bringing in programmers from its 3-year-old Bombay subsidiary, was placed under observation when complaints were received about its 'willful under-payment' of AIG contract workers."
 

"Slum land-lords or sweat-shop operators during the American mass immigration era apparently did not make particularly high profits." --- Thomas Sowell 1994 _Race & Culture_ pg 112

1996-01-01

1996-01-01?
Clair Brown, Ben Campbell & Greg Pinsoneault _University of California at Berkeley_
Is there a shortage of high-tech workers?
"a professional with 20 years of experience in 1985 earned 48% more than a professional with no experience, and by 1995 this increased to 73%.   Meanwhile in the high-tech industries, an engineer or professional with 20 years of experience earned 55% more than a new hire in 1985 but only 59% more in 1995.   Today high-tech engineers face a less favorable career outlook than engineers in other industries.   This is strong evidence against the existence of a labor shortage...   American universities graduated fifteen hundred PhDs and almost eight thousand MSs in electrical and communications engineering ('high-tech' engineers) in 1995.   Approximately one-half of engineering PhDs and one-third of engineering MSs were granted to foreign-born students in the mid-1990s...   Companies have little incentive to train older engineers because they can hire from the large flow of newly-trained and cheaper engineers.   Companies save money on training since the recent graduates already have cutting-edge knowledge.   Foreign graduate students are particularly attractive: they are often bound to a company for several years while applying for a green card.   Any decision to increase visas for foreign high-tech workers should be accompanied by the requirement that companies provide training for experienced engineers to ensure that the young engineering graduates are not simply displacing older engineers...   graduate training is subsidized and since this education guarantees a middle-class lifestyle, as a country we should ask to what extent we want to allocate this training to foreign students instead of U.S. students...   The current debate over temporary visas for high-tech workers should be transformed into a debate about the continuing education of older engineers and the engineering graduate educational opportunities provided to U.S. students."

1996-01-02

1996-01-03

1996-01-04

1996-01-04
_Challenger, Gray & Christmas_
"Blizzard of December Lay-offs!"

1996-01-05

1996-01-06

1996-01-07

1996-01-08

1996-01-09

1996-01-10

1996-01-11

1996-01-12

1996-01-13

1996-01-14

1996-01-15
"He [Martin Luther King] defined peace as a presence of justice, not quietness and the absence of noise." --- Jesse Jackson quoted on _CNN_
King's message pondered on national holiday

"True democracy presupposes 2 conditions: 1st, that the vast majority of the people have a genuine opinion upon public affairs; 2ndly, that electors will use their power as a public benefit." --- Andre Siegfried (quoted in Margaret Shertzer 1986 _The Elements of Grammar_ pg 93)

1996-02-15

1996-02-15
Howard F. Stein
Death Imagery and the Experience of Organizational Down-sizing
"The experiential realities of down-sizing, reductions in force (RIFing), re-structuring, re-engineering, right-sizing, & out-placement, are often at wide variance with their touted, and widely expected promises of increased productivity, efficiency, team-work, role interchangeability, & profit.   They often fall short of the promise of more for less...
  I shall ask you to wonder about our own business-related cultural presuppositions, most of which are not articulated in mission statements and strategic plans, to wonder why getting rid of people on large scale in the work-place via upper management decision-making is the first and final solution (the latter, a term upper management often uses) we now offer and implement to organizational problems of profit, loss, productivity, and global competition.   Why this?   Why now?...
  Down-sizing, Reductions in force or RIFing, re-structuring, re-engineering, right-sizing, out-placement, out-sourcing, & trimming fat, to name but several core words, are not primarily business decisions determined by economic rationality, enlightened self-interest, pragmatism, realism, empiricism, & objectivity...   down-sizing as a mode of decision-making & of induced social change is opaque to comprehension without our first recognizing that it rests upon unstated values placed on human life, well-being, & loyalty, to name but 3 dimensions...
  Even _The Wall Street Journal_ and _The Washington Post_ (e.g. K.D. Grimsley 1995 November 13-19 'The down-side of down-sizing: What's good for the bottom line isn't necessarily good for business' _The Washington Post National Weekly Edition_ pp 16-17) now feature articles that raise skeptical 'second thoughts' about the heady promises advocates of down-sizing made in the 1980s era of corporate leveraged buy-outs, raids, take-overs, & mergers...
  It has been estimated that two-thirds of all large firms in the United States (US) -- [2/3 of those with] more than 5K employees -- reduced their work-forces in the latter half of the 1980s.   From 1983 to 1988, approximately 4.6M US workers were displaced, with 2.7M (57.8%) resulting from plant closings.   An estimated 300K jobs will be lost in the banking industry alone in the 1990s, & over 200K jobs are being eliminated as part of the federal government's 'Reinvention' effort."

1996-02-23

1996-02-23 11:15PST (14:15EST) (19:15GMT)
Allan Dodds Frank _CNNfn_
The hidden costs of down-sizing
"Eric Greenberg: 'down-sizing fails to improve the product quality in most companies.   And only 47% or 48% of companies that had cut jobs since 1990 said their profits went up afterwards, according to Eric Greenberg, director of management studies for the [American Management Association].'...   In 1994, after lay-offs at General Motors, workers went on strike to protest unwanted over-time.   GM relented and rehired 1,800 workers."

"The fact is that full employment is a nebulous & misleading term. There are always unemployed resources, raw materials, & unfinished goods that need to be transformed into usable tools & capital." --- Mark Skousen 1991 _Economics on Trial_ pg 52

1996-03-01

1996-03-02

1996-03-03

1996-03-03 17:17

Science & Engineering Lobby Day in DC

• Employment-based immigration was increased in 1990 from 54K a year to 140K, based largely on a report by the National Science Foundation predicting a shortage of Scientists and Engineers.   That report has since been repudiated by the NSF in hearings held by the House Science Committee.
• Between 1990 and 1993, while engineering unemployment doubled to an all time high and the number of engineers employed in the US fell by 146K, over 40K engineers entered the US as immigrants and more than 100K foreign engineers were admitted on temporary work visas.
• During the 1990 to 1993 period, the US graduated 308K bachelor degrees in Math, Computer Science and Engineering, while only 204K job openings were made available through growth and replacement.
• Unemployment for recent Ph.D.s in mathematics and physics has reached 12%
• A study sponsored by the Sloan Foundation found that the US is producing 25% too many Ph.D.s in Science and Engineering.
• A 1988 report by the Office of Technology Assessment found that, while 14,450 doctorates in science and engineering were awarded to US citizens a year, aggregate demand amounted to only about 12K a year.   This was before the recent cut-backs in research funding by the Federal government.
• In 1990, 34% of the students that had graduated with a bachelor's degree in a science field a year earlier were employed in a science or engineering occupation.   In 1993, this figure was down to 12%.
• The American Association of Engineering Societies says that engineering salaries have been declining for the last 5 years.
• The Urban Institute reports that employment-based immigration has the most significant adverse impact on native wages of any type of immigration.
• Census data shows that recent computer science immigrants working in the Silicon Valley earn an average of $7K less than similarly educated and experienced natives.
• Less that 2% of foreign computer scientists who apply for labor certification are turned down.   Less than 4% of foreign engineers are denied labor certification.   A Houston Chronicle analysis of 3 years worth of foreign labor applications found that 99% of the time Texas employers were able to convince the Department of Labor that no qualified Americans could be found.
• Employers hire Americans in only 0.5% of the cases where they are referred for jobs where the employer is seeking to hire an immigrant...
• America does not suffer for lack of education, but from a lack of jobs.

1996-03-04

1996-03-05

1996-03-06

1996-03-07

1996-03-08

1996-03-09

1996-03-10

1996-03-11

1996-03-11
Michael J. Mandel _Business Week_
Is all that angst misplaced?: America can't return to the security of the 1960s but job gains and rising wages show the worst is probably over
"Slow growth.   Unemployment.   Inflation.   Foreign competition.   Somewhere along the way, they say, America has gotten off track.   'I don't think you can say to your kids anymore, ''If you study hard and play by the rules, things are going to be O.K.''', says Stephen D. McGregor, 44, a public-relations executive at a Dallas technology company who in the past 5 years has been laid off by both American Airlines and MCI...
  The U.S. unemployment rate hovers at a low 5.8%...   Job insecurity -- and it's a big one.   In January alone, U.S. corporations announced almost 100K job cuts, up sharply from a monthly rate of 37K during 1995.   'In December, I was telling people [job cuts] were slowing down.', says John A. Challenger, executive vice-president at Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., an out-placement firm.   'But they're accelerating again.'...
  A full 11% of male, college-educated workers lost their jobs from 1991 through 1993, according to a new study by Princeton University economist Henry S. Farber.   By comparison, during the recession years of 1981 to 1983, 8% of this group experienced a job loss...   massive corporate down-sizings...   Of the 8M new jobs created in the past 4 years, some 60% were managerial and professional positions.   In 1995 alone, the U.S. economy created more than 1M new managerial and professional jobs...
  Immigrants represent just 9% of the labor force, and merchandise imports account for only 10% of gross domestic product.   Moreover, some 60% of U.S. non-oil imports come from countries with higher labor costs, like Japan and Germany, giving little incentive to cut wages in the U.S. to compete...   $175G trade deficit in 1995...   the European Community, Japan, and Canada -- have been stuck in slow gear...
  Since 1992, real [American] corporate profits have risen by 34%, a bigger increase than they registered during the previous 15 years...   In 1987, 57% of high school graduates went to college soon after graduation.   That percentage now is 62% and climbing, despite rising college costs.   By comparison, the percentage of high school graduates enrolling in college hardly rose from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s."

1996-03-11
_AP_/_SunCoast Today_
Laid-off workers don't profit as companies recover
"At one time, the Wyman-Gordon metal forging plant was teeming with workers...   Today, only a fraction of the more than 2K people who once worked there remain.   But even though Wyman-Gordon is showing improving profits, the company is exhibiting no signs of sharing its new fortunes with its laid-off workers.   Industry experts say it's a common pattern...
  Gary N. Chaisson, professor of labor relations at Clark University's Graduate School of Management [said] 'The average worker is not sharing in the turn-around.'...   In the last 5 years, the number of steel-workers has dropped from nearly 1,200 to about 500...
  According to the job-tracking firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., companies nationwide eliminated 439,882 jobs last year, down slightly from 1994, when corporate earnings were not nearly as strong as they were in 1995.   Another 97,379 jobs were cut in January, the largest number of lay-offs in 2 years, Challenger reported.   Massachusetts has seen similar cuts.   Bank of Boston, which is buying BayBanks Corp., plans to cut 2K workers by the middle of the year.   Fleet Financial Group is slicing 3K jobs.   3 years into Massachusetts' economic recovery, companies have replaced only about 100K of the 250K jobs lost during the recession."

1996-03-12

1996-03-13

1996-03-14

1996-03-15

1996-03-16

1996-03-17

1996-03-17
Steve Lohr _NY Times_
Down-Sizing: How It Feels to Be Fired
"More and more of the jobs disappearing are those of higher-paid, white-collar employees, often at large corporations.   Many of the newly jobless have college degrees or graduate degrees.   Education no longer protects workers from being cast out...   'Five years ago, I thought Deming could be the voice of the corporate world.   Now I know it is really Dilbert.', wrote Tom Scott of Encinitas..."

1996-03-18

1996-03-19

1996-03-19
Michael S. Teitelbaum _NY Times_ "Too Many Engineers, Too Few Jobs" (quoted in Eric Weinstein _National Bureau of Economic Research_/_National Science Foundation_
How and Why Government, Universities, and Industry Create Domestic Labor Shortages of Scientists and High-Tech Workers (with graphs))
"There is no shortage, there is a surplus."

1996 March
James C. Lawson _The World & I_
Lay-Offs
"When AT&T announced 40K lay-offs less than 48 hours after the new year began, it was another vivid reminder that job security is nothing to take for granted.   Down-sizing, right-sizing, re-structuring, or corporate re-engineering -- whatever the name -- often means loss of a job, changing work responsibilities, or planning one's next career move.
  Last year, companies trimmed 439,883 jobs.   Since 1993, corporations have dropped 1.4M people from their pay-rolls, reports Challenger Gray & Christmas, a Chicago-based out-placement firm.   Mergers prompted 16%, or 72,083, of those lay-offs.   The cruelest cuts may have come in December, when companies eliminated 55,237 jobs...   Many of the displaced workers are finding new jobs -- some with greater responsibilities than they had in their previous positions.   Although some may not find jobs in the same industry, they may find positions in other industries where they can use the same job skills.   Challenger estimates about 85% - 90% of displaced workers find new jobs within 3 to 4 months of losing their old ones.   Although it may take longer, employees over 50 also are finding new opportunities in the job market."

"'Civil-ized' people do not need to be tightly constrained by laws or closely monitored by the organs of state.   Lacking such civility, they do, & society must over time become much less free." --- Richard J. Herrnstein & Charles Murray 1994 _The Bell Curve_ pg 254

1996 April
Richard Pascale & Brian Cairns _FastCompany_ issue 2 pg 62
The False Security of 'Employability': In the era of massive lay-offs, 'employability' has emerged as a consoling notion.   Don't believe it -- there's no easy answer to job loss.   (with feed-back)
"In fact, the death of job security, like any death, means that we have to learn to relate to the pain, not escape from it.   Once upon a time, corporations were like ocean liners.   Anyone fortunate enough to secure a berth cruised through a career and disembarked at retirement age.   A clear agreement charted the voyage: in return for loyalty, sacrifice, bureaucratic aggravation, and the occasional demanding boss, you received job security for life...
  In the United States alone, economist Robert Topel estimates that more than 12.2M white-collar workers lost their jobs between 1989 and 1991 and another 3M since then; of these, only 6.3M found jobs -- which, on the average, earned 30% less than before.   The corporations, on the other hand, saw aggregate profits rise to near-record levels -- a 10% increase in 1994 after a 13% increase in 1993...
  Leavers feel discarded and betrayed.   Survivors are consumed with their attempts to tough it out in jobs that have lost their joy, spontaneity, and personal relevancy...
  Ray Oldenburg, author of _The Great Good Place_, asserts that a healthy and balanced social identity has historically relied on 3 factors -- family, work, and 'a third place'...   it must be neutral ground; rank is forgotten there; conversation, rather than music or video games, is the central source of entertainment; it is frequented by a core group of regulars; and it fosters playful interpersonal exchange...   The Third Place provides its guests with novelty, perspective on life, a spiritual tonic (Oldenburg's phrase), and friends by the set -- that is, friendships with an open and inclusive group that are more important than any one relationship between specific individuals.   The problem in America is that the Third Place (once provided by the church, community groups, and the tavern) has largely vanished."
 

1996-04-01
Gene A. Nelson and others _Network of Emerging Scientists_
Health insurance for self-employed; Seeking professional association favoring employment opportunity; AIP employment stats; New web sites for science jobs; Scientists must join the fray; S&E employment; Discouraging words, a reality check

1996-04-13

1996-04-13
Gene A. Nelson _NAS_
We're All in This LifeBoat Together
"I earned my B.S. in biophysics from HMC in 1973, was a researcher at JPL, and earned my Ph.D. from SUNY Buffalo in biophysics in 1984...   The value of organizing to fight those interests intent on destroying the American S&E enterprise is clear.   Their most likely motivation is 'short term profitability' -- usually manifested as greed.   Mostly younger S&Es have shouldered the brunt of these harmful changes.   In these changes, a small group of individuals have dramatically reduced the S&E's retained portion of the value added to goods and services.   That loss decreases the probability that S&Es will have the power as individuals to reverse the harmful career trends.   The only choice left is to organize and to be politically active.   Now...   Some Statistics That Underscore The Talent Glut and the shortage of funding:... Only between FY1964 and 1966 were R&D funds above 11% of the Federal budget.   Current levels are in the vicinity of 4% of the Federal budget...   A projection of the future by representative George E. Brown of California from page 4 of the 1996 April 1 issue of Chemical & Engineering News indicates that... science faces a 'major diminution of Federal support for R&D', on the order of 30% over the next 7 years.   Coupled with cuts in private -- sector support for R&D, he predicts a loss of about 160K science and technology related jobs over that period (or about 1/6 of all individuals employed in R&D in the U.S.)...   New graduates are often retained for a short period of time by industry, then discarded.   Many can't pay back their student loans after they are un-employed or under-employed.   Contrast the supply of about 330K B.S. S&Es per year with the very modest 55,850 increase in annual demand for B.S. and above projections by Braddock under the 'Low real GNP growth model' in the Monthly Labor Review 1992 February, Page 35.   Then factor in the increase in immigration under IMMACT-90, obtained under suspect pretenses by American industry and universities.   With just the H1-B 'visiting worker' visa program and the S&E preference visas, around 200K new S&Es may be added annually by immigration.   Recent NSF estimates place the total R&D employment in the U.S. at approximately 1M.   That means in about 5 years, the entire U.S. R&D labor force could be replaced with lower-cost immigrants.   The