BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS

* Includes 61 reimbursable FTE in FY 2001.

1/ Increase includes $20.7 in budget authority for activities transferred from ETA ($10 million general funds and $10.7 million in trust funds). The trust fund amount will be replaced with funding generated by fees on employers requesting foreign labor certification under the Administration's legislative proposal. For further details, see the ETA section.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is the principal fact finding agency in the Federal government in the broad field of labor economics. The BLS provides general purpose statistics that provide some of the major indicators used in: developing economic and social policy; making decisions in the business and labor communities; developing legislative and other programs affecting labor; conducting research on labor market issues; and projecting Federal expenditures and receipts. The direct request for the BLS is $453.7 million, an increase of $40.5 million and 3 FTE below the FY 2000 level. The FTE reduction is due to the completion of the current cycle of updating the Consumer Price Index, which will finish a seven year cycle in FY 2000.

Labor Force Statistics
This program provides comprehensive and timely information on the labor force, employment, unemployment, and related labor market characteristics at the national level; industrial and occupational employment at the state level; labor force and unemployment figures at state and local levels. The BLS is continuing to develop monthly estimates on the numbers of separations, new hires, and current job openings for an all-industry total and major industry groupings. The BLS also will complete work on the multi-year effort to replace the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) system with the new North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). The proposed new system reflects technological and economic changes that have occurred over the past 20 years that are not reflected in the current classification system. The FY 2001 request includes $2.4 million and 8 FTE for working with the States to improve the quality, quantity, and timeliness of local labor force estimates produced by the Local Area Unemployment Statistics program, consistent with the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) mandates to improve labor market information. The FY 2001 request also includes $4.3 million and 5 FTE to develop a time-use survey that will provide nationally representative estimates of how Americans spend their time in an average week. This survey will contribute knowledge in many areas such as time invested in the care of the young and the elderly in our society, variations between single-parent and two-parent families, and time invested in skill acquisition.

Prices and Living Conditions
This program provides comprehensive and detailed measures of price change, including the Consumer Price Index (CPI), for many geographic areas within the United States as well as estimates of consumers' incomes and expenditures for analysis of price behavior and consumer spending patterns, the interpretation of price movements in relation to other major economic changes, and the formulation and evaluation of economic policy. The 2001 request includes $2.0 million and 17 FTE to extend the Producer Price Index (PPI) coverage for the first time to the construction sector of the U.S. economy; and to enhance coverage of the service sector in the PPI and BLS productivity data. The PPI changes may in turn lead to further improvement of the CPI.

Compensation and Working Conditions
This program provides for the development of a comprehensive body of reliable information on employee compensation and working conditions, including the Employment Cost Index (ECI) annual reports on workplace injuries and illnesses, and workplace fatalities. In FY 2001 the BLS will begin increasing the ECI sample, which will allow the BLS to produce annual cost levels and quarterly indices of changes in employer costs of wages and benefits by major industry and occupational groups with greater precision. The BLS is continuing a multi-year project that will culminate in the integration of the current Employment Cost Index, Employee Benefits Survey, and Occupational Compensation Survey Program into a single unified program of compensation statistics, the National Compensation Survey.

Productivity and Technology
The Productivity and Technology program measures productivity movements in major sectors of the economy and in individual industries, identifies the sources of productivity growth and investigates the nature of technological change and its effect on employment. This program also develops international comparisons of productivity, hourly compensation, unit labor costs, and employment and unemployment for foreign countries. The FY 2001 request includes an increase of $1.2 million and 10 FTE to develop practical solutions to difficult conceptual issues in the measurement of service-sector output and productivity and to develop new industry labor and multi-factor productivity series in the service-producing sector among other activities.

Employment Projections
The Employment Projections program develops information about the labor market for ten years in the future including labor force trends by sex, race, and age; employment trends by industry and occupation; and on the implications of these data for employment opportunities of specific groups in the labor force such as youth, the disadvantaged, and college graduates. The information is published in the Occupational Outlook Handbook, Occupational Outlook Quarterly and other special reports. The FY 2001 request includes $1.4 million and 7 FTE that will allow the BLS to provide technical guidance for a new Federal-State cooperative employment projections program, also linked to WIA mandated improvements to labor market information.

Executive Direction and Staff Services
This activity provides for agency-wide policy and management direction including all centralized support services in the administrative, publications, and computer systems support areas as well as the Survey Design Research Center. The request includes $500 thousand to research ways to expand the Nation's ability to measure discrimination in labor markets and employment relationships.

Consumer Price Index Revision (CPIR)
Begun in FY 1995, BLS will complete the revision in FY 2001. The BLS released the revised index based on the new market basket with data for January 1998, introduced the revised housing sample with data for January 1999 and will complete the revision in FY 2001 with remaining funds which were provided in FY 2000. The periodic revision of the CPI ensures accurate, reliable, and timely CPI data.