April 3, 2009

Welcome to the Commissioner’s Corner. I am Keith Hall, the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The BLS is the principal fact-finding agency for the Federal Government in the broad field of labor economics.  The Bureau, which is celebrating its 125th Anniversary this year, operates over two dozen surveys and programs that measure employment and unemployment, compensation, worker safety, productivity, and consumer and producer price movements.

The BLS website provides a wealth of information on these surveys and programs, and I encourage you to visit it often.  I have launched the Commissioner’s Corner to provide you with information on the many other areas in which BLS is involved such as our testimony before Congressional Committees, stories generated by media interviews, public speeches by BLS leadership, and awards and recognitions, among others. I’m also planning on occasion to draw your attention to outstanding new products on the BLS website.

Below you will find links to my testimony on the March 2009 employment situation delivered before the Congressional Joint Economic Committee (JEC) on Friday, April 3, 2009, as well as my JEC testimony on the February 2009 employment data. I have also provided a link to my testimony delivered on Wednesday, March 25, 2009, before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies hearing on “Raising Wages and Living Standards for Families and Workers.”

• Testimony delivered before the Congressional Joint Economic Committee (JEC) on April 3, 2009
• Testimony delivered on Wednesday, March 25, 2009 (PDF) before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies hearing on “Raising Wages and Living Standards for Families and Workers”
• Testimony delivered before the Congressional Joint Economic Committee (JEC) on March 6, 2009

Recently a reporter with The Washington Post.com spent part of a day with two of the Bureau’s economists as they compiled data for the March employment report. (Of course, the reporter was not permitted to see any of the actual March employment data on that day, because of the strict BLS standards regarding the handling of data prior to release.) If you are interested in seeing the work of BLS staff, please visit the the Federal Eye blog on the WashingtonPost.com website to find out about a day in the life of our economists.

I hope you will find the information on this page informative and I look forward to providing you with regular updates on our activities.