Monday, June 30, 2003

Second Response from DOL on my Email Query   Dear Marie, I am responding to your information request on measuring the "outsourcing" of jobs.  We do not collect information directly related to job outsourcing.    In the Current Population Survey (CPS), an individual is classified as "employed" if they did any work for pay or profit during the survey reference week, or worked 15 hours or more as an unpaid worker in a family-owned business.  In the CPS, we do not ask respondents whether their job was "outsourced."  If, for example, an individual's job was outsourced to another company, and that person was without a job and actively looking for work, then they would show up in our estimates of the unemployed.  If the job went to another individual in the U.S., that person would be represented in our counts of the employed.  We do ask about reasons for unemployment, which include "job losers," but this concept is probably not specific enough for your research.       In a special supplement to the CPS, conducted every other year, we collect information on Displaced Workers (DW).  Displaced Workers are defined as persons 20 years of age and older who lost or left jobs because their plant or company closed or moved, there was insufficient work for them to do, or their position or shift was abolished.  The supplement covers the prior 3 calendar years and our analysis typically focuses on DW's who had been with their employer for 3 years or more (long-tenured).  The reasons for displacement, mentioned above, may be of interest to you in your study of job outsourcing.  The most current DW data are for January 2002, published online at http://stats.bls.gov/news.release/disp.toc.htm.  Table 2 in the report shows estimates by reasons for job loss.       I hope this information is useful.  Please feel free to contact me with any questions. Ryan Helwig Bureau of Labor Statistics, Division of Labor Force Statistics Phone: 202.691.6385 Email: helwig.ryan@bls.gov ;       I have been poking around the links in both emails.  And I am finding some very interesting things.  After I apply some major digestion, I will let you know what I find. 2:20:10 PM    Talk back! []

Got a Response to My Email Inquiry   Mon 6/30/2003 9:12 AM   To:  'cpsinfo@bls.gov' Re:  Curious about jobs created statistics   Do your statistics on jobs created include jobs that are outsourced?  Is the outsourcing of jobs something that you are tracking as a subset on the issue of jobs lost or gained?   I appreciate any response or pointers to links that could answer my questions.   Marie Foster     Mon 6/30/2003 12:40 PM   Unfortunately, the Mass Layoff Statistics (MLS) program does not collect any information related to the issues of "outsourcing" of jobs.      MLS is concerned with layoffs and plant closings that involve at least 50 workers.  Mass layoff monthly data series are based only on administrative statistics (weekly filings for unemployment insurance) and are without regard to duration of the layoff.  These data are available from April 1995 through May 2003.  A mass layoff event in the monthly series is defined as 50 or more initial claims for unemployment insurance benefits filed against the same establishment during a consecutive 5-week period. Extended mass layoff data are the result of employer contact to confirm the existence of a layoff which lasted more than 30 days and to collect additional information concerning the layoff, including the reason for layoff, the number of persons actually separated from jobs, and anticipated recall possibilities.  An extended mass layoff event occurs when 50 or more workers file initial claims for unemployment insurance benefits against the same establishment during a consecutive 5-week period, with at least 50 workers separated for more than 30 days.  The extended mass layoff data are available from the 2nd quarter 1995-1st quarter 2003.  Further information on the MLS program can be obtained by visiting hhttp://stats.bls.gov/mls/home.htm. If you have additional questions, please contact us again.    Daniel J. Curtin Economist (202)-691-6415   Who says that the Government is not efficient?   Looks like I was correct at least on one thing.  If a company created a whole bunch of new jobs in India they could easily fill out the DOL form and make it look like the jobs were created in the US.  It appears that while individual economists are on top of their correspondence, DOL policy is not on the bow wave of current employment practices. 1:03:38 PM    Talk back! []

The Need for Valid Statistics   Statistics in a way are the new religion in our post modern society.  Before someone jumps on my bum about being sacrilegious let me explain.  Religion gives people answers to the questions of life that cause us problems.  It provides guidelines for behavior.  Statistics in our complicated existence do the same for societies.  We rely on statistics.  It is too hard to try to get answers without them as we are too big and complex to count realistically by individuals.   The problem is that without good statistics, you do not get good guidance.  And it is apparent to me that this may be where a lot of our problems are coming from.  All we have to do is look at the statistics on labor vis a vis outsourcing to get an idea of what I am talking about.   There was a good article in our Sunday paper here on white collar job outsourcing.  There is an organization that is trying to get started that is working to prevent US jobs going to foreign nationals.  In searching their TORAW’s website I had my first *ah ha* moment.  One of the things that is evident is that the numbers on unemployed and underemployed are depressed in our country because lots of people fail to register for work at their local job center.  There are lots of reasons for this.  The biggest in my opinion after years working with unemployed people is that they don’t think it is worth it to them to be registered.  They have little faith in Job Banks.  Hell, when I was first looking for work in 1971 people had little faith in them.  That is not new and has only gotten worse over the years.    As I was thinking about this I heard on the radio how many ‘new’ jobs have been created.  We hear this all the time and I wondered where reporters get this information from.  You never see any stories in the news that are the opposite of “300 Jobs Lost at Software Spectrum” I wondered if this is because of the good news syndrome.  But I doubted that.  Actually, if a major industry does decide to relocate to a location it does become news.  But the addition of new jobs seems to slip the tracks of reporting.   It occurred to me that perhaps part of the problem is that ‘outsourced jobs’ are not being tracked in the official statistics.  My initial outing in the statistics area of the Department of Labor indicates that this is a very fuzzy problem.  There is nothing that I could find that specifically looks at the issue.  (I have emailed them in case I have not found the link.)    They do have PDF versions of some of the surveys that employers fill out concerning job statistics.  It is interesting to me that there is no category for outsourcing on the form.  This leads me to think that our statistics for job creation and loss are very imprecise.  And if you look at the number of states where even reporting is purely voluntary you get a good idea of why there may be a disconnect between what you see when you are trying to actually get a job and the general perception among politicians of how easy it is to get a good one. 10:05:24 AM    Talk back! []

© Copyright 2003 Marie Foster.