a
dispatch from san francisco:
The Bush administration, under fire for its handling of the economy, has quietly killed off a Labor Department program that tracked mass layoffs by U.S. companies.
The statistic, which had been issued monthly and was closely watched by
hard-hit Silicon Valley, served as a pulse reading of corporate America's financial health.
There's still plenty of economic data available charting employment trends nationwide. But the mass-layoffs stat comprised an easy-to-understand
overview of which industries are in the greatest distress and which workers are bearing the brunt of the turmoil.
"It was a visible number," said Gary Schlossberg, senior economist at Wells Capital Management in San Francisco. "In times like these, it was a good window on how businesses were cutting back."
No longer. But then, businesses cutting back didn't exactly jibe with the White House's recent declarations that prosperity is right around the corner.
You had to look pretty hard just to learn that the mass-layoffs stat had
been scotched. No announcement was made by the Labor Department, and no prominent mention of the change was posted at the department's Web site.
In fact, news of the program's termination came only in the form of a single paragraph buried deep within a press release issued on Christmas Eve about November's mass layoffs.
It simply said that funding for the program had dried up and that the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics was unable to find an alternative source of funding.
No doubt as intended, the announcement slipped by virtually unnoticed. Even state officials were surprised to learn of the demise of what they called an important, if downbeat, barometer of the nation's economy.
[ ... ]
― maura (maura), Monday, 6 January 2003 14:42 (twenty-two years ago)
I saw another article yesterday which said this is the second time it's been dropped due to "lack of funding". The first being in 1992 by Bush the Elder during his 1st-term recession. It was reinstated by clinton in 1995 (business was decent, relatively speaking).
But to a certain degree, if you don't have the statistic, the problem doesn't exist. Opponents of this administration can say, "like, a whole bunch of folks have been laid off. How many? uh, a bunch, y'know?"...
I definitely aggree w/ mark's point.
― nick ring (nick ring), Monday, 6 January 2003 15:52 (twenty-two years ago)
the bush administration has quietly done some things that are as terrible as one could imagine. if you go to the dept of education website, they have carefully weeded out and taken down all of the articles that do not hew to the administration's testing-testing-testing no-child-left-behind educational policy. that is, all the sundry research done for the d.o.e. over the past umpteen years has effectively been made unavailable because much of it does not support the policies drawn by bush et al. this is a fairly unprecedented move. we are in the midst of the worst federal administration ever and the damage is to a great extent irreperable.
― Amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 6 January 2003 16:25 (twenty-two years ago)
In the years to follow this regime/administration, the Freedom of Information Act will have it's work cut out for it. If they don't manage to do away with it.
― nickalicious (nickalicious), Monday, 6 January 2003 16:46 (twenty-two years ago)
In government-speak, "lack of funding" usually means that they have siphoned off the dosh to their more important pursuits: counting how many cows can be fit onto a field, hiding the cost for a politician's latest Porche, stuff like that.
They probably figure that if the number of unemployed aren't counted, then the high number of the hungry and destitute will simply disappear.
― Nichole Graham (Nichole Graham), Monday, 6 January 2003 18:58 (twenty-two years ago)