2001-06-01

2001-06-01
Dwight M. Jaffee & Cynthia A. Kroll
The Bubble Has Burst: How Will California Fare?
"Since reaching a peak over 5K early last year, the NASDAQ bubble has burst, with the index falling below 2000...   As of mid-March, the NASDAQ composite index was down 60% from a high of above 5000.   All of the gains of 1999 and early 2000 have been lost by investors.   Adjustments are less severe in other stock indices, but by 2001 March, these, too, were steadily dropping..."

2001-06-02

2001-06-03

2001-06-04

2001-06-04
_USA Today_/_AP_
Laid-Off Techies NetWork at Pink Slip Parties

2001-06-04
_USA Today_/_Reuters_
"Lay-Offs announced by U.S. companies tumbled 52% in May to 80,140 after hitting their highest monthly count in 8 years in April, Challenger, Gray & Christmas said Monday."

2001-06-05

2001-06-05
Stephen Taub _CFO.com_
Is the Lay-Off Epidemic Finally Subsiding?
"It looks like May's decline in the unemployment rate should be taken seriously.   If you recall, economists and many other so-called experts were surprised that the jobless rate dipped to 4.4% last month from 4.5% in April...   It seems that U.S. corporations announced 80,140 lay-offs in May, which was down 52% from April, which had hit a decade-high of 165,564, according to a survey by outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.   This was the lowest figure in 6 months.   However, job cuts nearly tripled compared with 2000 May.   High-tech industries accounted for 45% of announced lay-offs in May.   Leading the May lay-off brigade were E-commerce companies, which cut 8,243 people, followed by media companies, which canned 6,483."

2001-06-06

2001-06-06
Daniel F. Delong _News Factor_
2000 does not look promising for IT
"For the first time since 1995, job growth in the high-tech sector dipped below 5% in 2000, setting the stage for this year's massive slow-down, says a report by the nation's largest tech lobbying group.   Despite its recent problems, technology remains a large part of the U.S. economy, accounting for 29% of all exports, according to Cyberstates 2001, an annual study released Wednesday by the American Electronics Association [AeA] in conjunction with the Nasdaq stock market.   High-tech firms created 234,800 jobs in 2000, up 4.6% from 1999.   In previous years, however, annual growth ranged from 5% to 7%, the study said...   Through May, companies nationwide had announced 268,437 lay-offs in high-tech fields, according to job placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.   Tech lay-offs accounted for 41% of the 652,510 job cuts announced in all industries.   Technology exports nearly doubled last year, the report said, claiming a larger share of the export pie.   The US$223G worth of semiconductors, software and other tech goods and services exported in 2000 represent a 92% increase from 1999 levels, and make up 29% of all goods and services shipped over-seas.   The industry's trade deficit, however, reached a record high of $49G..."

2001-06-06
Michael Pastore _ClickZ Network_
High-Tech Employment & Wages Grew Across USA in 2000
Margaret Johnston: IDG/ComputerWorld/IT World
"Technology industry employment grew 4.6% in 2000, its slowest rate since 1994-1995, according to a report by the AeA, and The Nasdaq Stock Market.   The report, 'Cyberstates 2001: State-by-State Overview of the High-Technology Industry', also found that U.S. high-tech industry jobs reached 5.3M last year, an increase of 235K from 1999.   Software and computer-related services employment reached 2M in 2000, adding more than 145K jobs last year...
  The national average high-tech wage of $64,900 rose from $58,976 in 1998 and was 95% greater than the nation's average private sector wage of $33,200 in 1999, compared to 67% in 1994.
  U.S. high-tech exports, meanwhile, reached $223G last year, a 92% increase from $116G in 1994.   High-tech exports now represent 29% of all U.S. exports...
  The headlines may have been telling a different story, but the report found that high-tech manufacturing employment rebounded by 18K jobs in 2000 compared to a decline of 69K jobs between 1998 and 1999.   The explosive rate of growth in software and computer-related services jobs diminished to 8% compared to 15% in 1999, but this industry segment added 145,900 jobs in 2000.
  California remains the nation's technology capital, employing 973,600 workers in 2000.   Texas ranked No. 2 in overall high-tech employment with 440,700 workers, followed by New York, Massachusetts and Florida."

2001-06-07

2001-06-08

2001-06-09

2001-06-10

2001-06-11

2001-06-11
Michael Bartlett 2001-06-11 _Newsbytes_
IT Salaries Fell in 2001
"The average compensation for IT workers has fallen for the first time in 16 years, according to a new study by Janco Associates.   The study found that in mid-sized firms, the average IT salary in the first half of this year totaled $110,578, down from $113,224.   At large firms, the average salary for IT workers was $108,275, down from $108,963.   The study looked at base salary, bonuses and fringe benefits, and stock options.   Janco CEO M. Victor Janulaitis noted that it was the first time since the study began in 1985 that the average IT salary declined, which he blamed on 'the dot-com phenomenon'.   He says the closure of many dot-coms, combined with fewer firms employing workers through the H-1B visa program, which allowed highly skilled foreign workers to remain in the U.S. for up to 6 years provided they were filling a highly paid position that no U.S. worker could fill, has driven down the salary figures.   Most firms will continue to be budget-conscious for the next 2 or 3 quarters, says Janulaitis.   He says e-commerce experts and computer security professionals are among those whose jobs are not at risk in the current downturn because they are responsible for improving revenue and removing potential threats, while those whose jobs may be in trouble are IT workers in infrastructure positions."

2001-06-11
Porter Anderson 2001-06-11 CNN.com
Tech employees' tolerance of H-1B
"A Techies.com survey of approximately 1,100 IT workers found that most respondents want to put limits on H-1B visas.   More than half of the workers said foreign IT workers should not be allowed entrance into the United States without prior corporate sponsorship.   The survey also found that entry-level IT workers had the least tolerance for H-1B employees, along with those who live in areas where IT jobs are scarce.   Similarly, women were less likely than men to accept foreign workers.   On the other hand, 70% of respondents said they would have no problem working with H-1B employees.   Only 55% said they would be uncomfortable being supervised by such workers.   About 15% of respondents said foreign workers are not as competent as American workers.   Most IT professionals earning $100K did not want the government to intervene in the H-1B matter.   Despite the visa program, many tech jobs are still remaining unfilled, according to recent data from the Employment Policy Foundation."

2001-06-12

2001-06-13

2001-06-13
Michael McCarthy _USA Today_
Dot-com service companies feel burn
"At least 54 Internet companies shut down in 2001 May vs. 13 in 2000 May, according to research company Webmergers.com.   At least 493 have tanked since 2000 January, with more than half of them going under this year."

2001-06-13
Daniel F. DeLong _News Factor_
Tech rebound could be stalled until 2002
"a report issued Monday, showing that salaries for the highest-paid bracket of information technology managers at large companies have fallen 37%, which is the first decrease since 1985.   M. Victor Janulaitis, CEO of Janco Associates in Park City, Utah, said CIO salaries at mid-level firms were off 31%...   Industry-wide job cuts have been an issue since the spring of 2000.   For the first time since 1995, job growth in the high-tech sector dipped below 5% last year.   Coupled with about 100K tech lay-offs through the first 5 months of 2001, it is making for a long, hot summer of discontent.   Dot-com firms lead the way as the hardest-hit tech segment, losing 64,983 jobs in the first five months of the year, according to out-placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.   These sour notes come on the heels of news that U.S. sales of home computers will plunge by 17.3% this year, following a drop of 26.4% in the number of shipments in the first quarter."

2001-06-13
_USA Today_
Laid-Off Workers Struggle to Cope

2001-06-14

2001-06-15

2001-06-16

2001-06-16
Beth Duff-Brown _Houston Chronicle_
U.S. customer service may come from distant land
"Thousands of Indians right out of college line up for the jobs.   They get months of speech training in American or British accents, depending on the client...   Still, Balasubramanyam earns just $213 a month on the overnight shift.   She takes dozens of calls from customers of a US company that she can't identify, since some clients don't want Americans knowing their calls get answered in India."

2001-06-17

2001-06-18

2001-06-18
David Walsh _VDare_
Immigrant Crime
"Richard H. Ward, Dean and Director of the Center of Criminal Justice at Texas's Sam Houston State University (and an ex-NYPD detective), recently published an interesting study in Criminal Justice 2000 called 'The Internationalization of Criminal Justice' about the importation of crime: narco-terrorism, street crime and gangs, home invasions, credit-card and staged-accident scams, identity theft, and slavery.   'Globalization', Ward observed in his introduction, 'is producing... new challenges for criminal justice practitioners and researchers...   To the law enforcement community, particularly at the local level, global crime is frequently linked to illegal aliens' (now officially recorded as entering the US at a rate of some 25K each month, and probably far higher in actuality).   At the same time, 'criminal activity by... legal immigrants... has grown considerably'."

2001-06-19

2001-06-20

2001-06-20
Frank Shostak _Ludwig von Mises Institute_
Is Saving Bad for the Economy?

2001-06-21

2001-06-21
Scott F. Granis
A long, hot summer (pdf)

2001-06-21
Beth Givens _Privacy Rights ClearingHouse_
college and university privacy violations: Socialist Insecurity Numbers (SINs) and idiot-KKKards

2001-06-22

2001-06-23

2001-06-24

2001-06-25

2001-06-26

2001-06-27

2001-06-27
Lori Enos _CNN_/_eCommerce Times_/_CIO Today_/_NewsFactor_
Decline in Job Cuts Could Signal End of Dot-Com Shake-Out
"So far this year, 74,199 dot-com job cuts have been reported, a running total that is already 80% more than all of the dot-com lay-offs in 2000...   CGC reported that 31% fewer employees got pink slips from their dot-com employers in June than in May.   A total of 9,216 job cuts were reported in June, compared to 13,419 in May...   Even though the total number of job cuts is dropping, June's job cuts were still more than five times as many as the 1,652 reported in the year-earlier month, near the start of the dot-com shake-out.   Over the past 6 months, 74,199 dot-com job cuts have been reported -- 80% more than all of the dot-com lay-offs in 2000.   Dot-com job cuts set a record in April when 17,554 dot-com employees lost their jobs."

2001-06-28

2001-06-28 04:00PDT (07:00EDT) (11:00GMT)
Paul Festa _CNET_
Probing IBM's Nazi connection: An interview with Edwin Black
"As the book's title suggests, Black attempts to establish that IBM didn't merely vend its products to Hitler -- as did many American companies -- but maintained a strategic alliance with the Third Reich in which it licensed, maintained and custom-designed its products for use in the machinery of the Holocaust...   We assembled a team of 100, including researchers, historians, translators, archivists, children of Holocaust survivors, and World War II intelligence people.   They worked in seven countries in some 50 archives and yielded 20K documents, which I organized and cross-indexed.   Then some 35 historians reviewed every line of my manuscript before publication.   But I finally assembled this dark puzzle that had eluded the 15M people who have seen this machine in the Holocaust museum.   I finally connected the dots.   And those dots are that IBM engineered a strategic business alliance and joint planning program with Nazi Germany from the very first moment in 1933 and extending right through the war that endowed the Hitler regime with the technology and the tools it needed to expedite and, in many ways, automate, all 6 phases of Hitler's war against the Jews.   Those 6 phases are identification, expulsion, confiscation, ghettoization, deportation and ultimately even extermination...   We're not just talking about the German subsidiary.   We're talking about the Swiss, the Swedish, the Italian, the Spanish, the Polish, the Romanian and Brazilian subsidiaries -- more than 20 subsidiaries located across Europe and elsewhere.   This was, in fact, a global commitment by IBM to support the Hitler machine as it conquered Europe and as it destroyed ethnic peoples: Gypsies, Jews and others...   Thomas Watson and the New York office micromanaged every aspect of their subsidiaries in Europe and especially in Germany, their most profitable foreign operation.   The New York office was aware of all uses for their machines in Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe from the moment Hitler came to power in 1933 until about the fall of 1941, two years after World War II started.   Remember, IBM custom-designed the machines, custom-designed the applications and custom-printed the punch cards.   There were no universal punch cards or machine wiring.   Programs to identify Jews, Jewish bank accounts, barrels of oil, Luftwaffe flights, welfare payments, train schedules into camps, and even the concentration camp information--all these had to be tailored for each application.   Even after America entered the war, when the Nazis appointed the custodian, all the original IBM managers were in place.   The Reich just locked the profits for a few years just as any receiver would be for any company in receivership.   IBM collected all the money after the war...   On September 9, the German managers of IBM Berlin send a letter to Thomas Watson with copy to staff in Geneva via phone that, due to the 'situation', they need high-speed alphabetizing equipment.   IBM wanted no paper trail, so an oral agreement was made, passed from New York to Geneva to Berlin, and those alphabetizers were approved by Watson, personally, before the end of the month.   That month he also approved the opening of a new Europe-wide school for Hollerith technicians in Berlin.   And at the same time he authorized a new German-based subsidiary in occupied Poland, with a printing plant across the street from the Warsaw Ghetto at 6 Rymarska Street.   It produced some 15M punch cards at that location, the major client of which was the railroad."

2001-06-29

2001-06-30

2001 May/June
Timothy W. Brogan _American [Temporary] Staffing Association_
ASA's Annual Analysis and Propaganda Piece for the Temporary Staffing (Body Shopping) Industry

2001 June
top 500 fastest super computers LinPack bench-mark (rated in Giga Floating-point Operations/s)

2001 January - June
_Working People_
Lay-Off Score-Card

2001 June
Elizabeth Wright _Issues & Views_
Hush, you must not speak it!

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

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

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