After approving one of the largest budget-busting bills in U. S. history (Health Care Reform), the Obama administrations has decided to save money by eliminating the Bureau of Labor Statistics\u2019 International Labor Comparison Program in the Fiscal 2011 Federal budget.<\/p>\n
This program provides estimates of international comparisons to equivalent U. S. hourly compensations costs, productivity and labor costs, labor force, employment and unemployment rates, and consumer prices.\u00a0 This data series is the only one of its kind in the world and has been in operation since the 1960s.\u00a0 The measly two million dollars <\/strong>saved would be used to fund other BLS programs, such as the unemployment rate or Consumer Price Index.<\/p>\n The justification in the \u201cTerminations, Reductions, and Savings<\/a>\u201d is that \u201cthe data series is used to produce articles, technical papers, or special reports that are not widely used,\u201d which is in direct contradiction to the justification for funding the program in the 2010 budget; i.e., \u201cpolicy makers through the U. S. government and U. S. business and labor groups who use the data to assess\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 U. S. economic performance relative to other countries and to provide indicators of the competitive position of the United States in increasingly globalized markets.\u201d<\/p>\n The 2010 Edition has pages and pages of easy to read charts showing data such as industry output as a percent of world industry output in which the United States contribution is 18 percent compared to China\u2019s 12 percent.\u00a0 The United States still ranked number one in manufacturing output as a percent of world manufacturing output in 2008.\u00a0 The United States ranked highest in productivity as measured by Gross Domestic Product per employed person at 97.1 compared to China\u2019s rate of 10.2.\u00a0\u00a0 India ranked lowest at 7.5<\/p>\n