Economic News 2000 April

updated: 2013-12-04

2000-04-01

2000-04-02

2000-04-03

2000-04-03
Duncan Campbell _The Guardian_
CIA says young girls sold as sex slaves in USA
"Around 50K women and children are being brought into the United States every year to work as prostitutes or as virtual slaves, according to an unpublished report by the CIA.   Among those sold into forced labour are girls as young as 9, it claims."
 

2000-04-04

2000-04-05

2000-04-06

2000-04-06
_USA Today_
Tech wealth slip slidin' away

2000-04-06
_Internet Scout Project_
Mass Lay-offs -- Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS): April is the Cruelest Month
 

2000-04-07

2000-04-08

2000-04-09

2000-04-10

2000-04-11

2000-04-12

2000-04-12
_AP_/_abc News_
Everywhere You Want to Be?: Complaints Rise of Legal Visas Turned Back by INS
"Managers of Japanese- and Korean-owned companies in Oregon and southwest Washington say executives and computer engineers have been barred entry on technicalities, interrupting manufacturing worth millions of dollars.   Fiorentino acknowledged that the INS, which is part of the Justice Department, operates on updated regulations that don't correspond to State Department policies regarding the 'H-1B' visa."

2000-04-12
Garth Montgomery _IT news_
skills shortage propaganda
"The Federal government's IT skills task-force has been deemed a failure in developing the wetware needed to stem the 30K job vacancies in the Australian technology sector...   Roberts said businesses needed to tackle the 'chronic skills shortage' by offering employee education schemes, market based pay, career development, and a compelling work culture that balances home and work life.   Gartner believes that by 2004, demand for IT skills in Australia would out-strip supply by 20%.   The IT work-force currently grows at 10% a year.   Local staff churn rates currently sit between 10%-20% in the IT industry -- around 50K jobs a year...   Organisations that invest in long term skill development plans will spend 25% less on hiring, training and sourcing than those who continue to use the market for the latest skills."
 

2000-04-13

2000-04-14

2000-04-15

2000-04-16

2000-04-17

2000-04-17
Gail Repsher Emery _Washington Technology_
Worker Shortage Propaganda Continues Despite Economic Depression and Rising Lay-Offs
"Despite the rash of dot-com bombs and economic downturn that has resulted in massive lay-offs of technology employees in recent months, surviving companies [their PR departments and executives still claim they] face huge shortages of skilled workers...   More than 41K Internet-company employees have lost their jobs since 1999 December, according to Chicago out-placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc...   Signs of an economic slow-down include the smallest increase in private pay-rolls in 4 months.   Private pay-rolls rose by 49K in December, the smallest jump since 2000 August, while the unemployment rate held steady at 4%, the Labor Department reported January 5.   Job cuts at Internet companies rose 19% to 10,459 in December, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas.   The technology-laden Nasdaq Stock Market has dropped more than 50% since its high in 2000 March."

2000-04-17
B. Lindsay Lowell _Georgetown University_
H-1B Temporary Workers: Estimating the Population (pdf)
IEEE*USA forum (pdf)
"The specialty program has grown from less than 20K visas issued yearly in the 1970s, to 48K by the end of the 1980s, and it reached its cap (imposed in 1992) of 65K in 1998...
 
The estimated population under current legislation is 425K in the year 2000 and is forecast to reach a high of 460K in 2001.   It would then will slowly decline as the permitted number of H-1Bs under the cap drops as required by current legislation.
 
What if the Senate bill passes into law and the cap was raised to 195K for the proposed 3-year period?   This cap would generate a high of 710K in 2002 and would slowly decline to around 270K by 2010, assuming a return to the 1990 Act's ceiling of 65K new visas yearly.   If future legislation kept expanded caps, forecast populations would be just more than 400K (current cap) and 800K (proposed Senate cap).
 
Large numbers of (potential) adjusters are created under either Act, hitting a high of 43K in 2003 under today's legislation, and 74K in 2004 under the proposed Senate Act.   Under current law; however, only some of these persons will be able to obtain permanent green cards...
 This set of estimates indicates that current levels of H-1B admissions generate a sizable population of temporary workers who, along with their employers, intend to convert their status to a permanent place in the United States.   Increasing levels beyond today's cap generates a significantly larger working population of would-be H-1B adjusters that will exceed the capacity of the permanent system.   These numbers will disconnect the transition from temporary to permanent for large numbers of H-1B visa-holders.   The implicit promise of permanent immigration will be broken for the majority of H-1B workers.
 
Congress has altered the basic dynamic of the old H-1 visa as constructed in the Immigration Act of 1952.   The removal of the requirement that employer intend that the job be a temporary one was removed in 1970.   The requirement that the foreign worker intend to stay only temporarily was removed in the Immigration Act of 1990, that is the H-1B may have the dual intent of staying temporarily or permanently.   That legislation also required employers to attest to working conditions and capped visa numbers...
 
By conflating temporary and permanent objectives, it accomplishes neither well.   The current system is already strained beyond its capacity.   As Congress proposes to significantly increase the population of H-1Bs it will be increasing the number of would-be permanent immigrants.   Yet, an immigration system that cannot handle the current volume is unlikely to become more efficient and the existing frustration of employers and foreign workers are most likely to compound as a result.   Growing back-logs of H-1Bs in the queue for permanent admissions are one sure outcome, as are growing numbers of H-1Bs who had thought they could stay but are unable to legally do so.   The system loses its transparency and will make one more promise to immigrants that it cannot keep."
-30-
 
 

2000-04-18

2000-04-19

2000-04-20

2000-04-21

2000-04-22

2000-04-23

2000-04-24

2000-04-24
Stacie Garnett _Responsible Wealth_
Huffy's Down-Sizing CEO Should Down-Size His Own Pay
"Share-holders will present a resolution at Huffy's annual meeting on Thursday, April 27, in Dayton, OH, calling on the company to freeze CEO pay during periods of down-sizing.   If costs must be cut, Responsible Wealth is urging executives to share in the sacrifice.   In 1999, Huffy closed 2 plants, including one in Farmington, MO, eliminating 600 jobs...   Huffy had sapped the community of $1.5M in grants, $5M in low-interest loans, and $20M in municipal bonds with the promise of creating new jobs.   However, Farmington got the short end of the stick with jobs that were low paying and insecure.   Huffy no longer manufactures any bicycles in the United States of America."

2000-04-24
Joel Stewart _Immigration Daily_
Legal Rejection of US Workers
"even in a depressed economy, employers who favor aliens have an arsenal of legal means to reject all U.S. workers who apply."
 

2000-04-25

2000-04-26

2000-04-27

2000-04-28

2000-04-29

2000-04-30

2000 April [2002-09-04 05:38 ET]
Chris Plummer _CBS.MarketWatch.com_
Sparing ourselves nightmares: Why we rarely dream about money
alternate URL
"Yet in traumatic situations, money trouble can produce nightmares, as Jerry Kroth [family therapist & professor at Santa Clara University in California] discovered in querying 28 stock-brokers in 2000 April after the worst week for the Dow in 11 years."

2000 April
Sarah Anderson & John Cavanaugh _Institute for Policy Studies_
Bearing the Burden
"In the aftermath of the global financial crisis that exploded in 1997 July, tens of millions of workers lost their jobs around the world.   Hundreds of millions watched their real wages fall.   Millions of immigrant workers were sent home...   By the end of 1999, most of the crisis countries were showing signs of recovery...   working families in these countries saw little improvement in their own lives."

2000 April
Fundamentals Still Sound, Consumers Still Optimistic
"The latest available readings of consumer confidence were taken before the market sell-off in mid-April, but showed that confidence remained near an all-time record high.   Various events (rising oil prices, volatile stock prices, continued interest rate hikes) have tested consumer confidence since January, but strength persists.   The University of Michigan's Index of Consumer Sentiment fell to 107.1 in the 2000 March survey from 111.3 in February and the all-time peak of 112 in January, but remained higher than the average level recorded for any year in nearly 50 years."

2000 April
Lisa Larson _PrePress Technology_
Lay-Offs will not delay Quark XPress 5.0
"Despite laying off a dozen employees, including 6 software engineers, Quark Inc. said it will not extend the target release date of QuarkXPress 5.0 beyond the end of the year.   The lay-offs were part of a reorganization of the 500 employees at Quark's Denver head-quarters aimed at focusing efforts on releasing the new version of XPress, the company said."
 

External links may expire at any time.
Neither this page, nor the opinions expressed or implied in it are endorsed by Michael Badnarik, Ron Paul, Bob Barr, Wayne Allyn Root, Warner Brothers, Gary Johnson, president Donald Trump, nor by my hosts, Kermit and Rateliff.

---

jgo Resume	Reading Room
jgo Econ Data & Graphs	jgo Econ News Bits
Economic News Analysis Summary
Kermit's home page	jgo Links
jgo's Work in Progress
Page Top