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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (504741)	12/6/2003 12:59:48 AM
From: Hope Praytochange	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769667

The government collects two sets of employment data every month, a source of endless confusion because the two surveys sometimes provide widely varying pictures of the health of the job market. Add in the fact that some of the statistics, but not all, are seasonally adjusted, and confusion can easily reign. The survey to which Wall Street pays the most attention is the establishment survey, which questions employers about how many people are on payrolls. It is that survey that provided disappointments this month, as it has done for most of the last few years. But the report of strong growth a month ago set off hopes that the employment picture was finally brightening. That number shows 328,000 more jobs last month than in July, when employment hit its recent low. Even with those increases, there are now 2.26 million fewer jobs, on a seasonally adjusted basis, then there were in January 2001 when President Bush took office. The other survey is the household survey, which involves asking questions of a sample of households reached each month by telephone. That survey is used to calculate the unemployment rate, and in recent years it has painted a less depressing picture of the employment situation. The latest report finds that there are now 757,000 more people working than in January 2001, on a seasonally adjusted basis. That survey shows a seasonally adjusted gain over the last two months of 1 million people working, the largest two-month move since the first two months of 2000, at the peak of the economic boom. Robert Barbera, the chief economist of ITG/Hoenig Securities, said there were other statistics, like a strong report on factory orders released yesterday, that indicated that the economy was improving. "I expect the establishment survey will fall in line," he said. One measure of employment is the percentage of people 16 years and older who are working, a statistic based on the household survey. During the boom, that rose to a record 64.8 percent in April 2000. It fell to a low of 62 percent in September and has now edged back to 62.4 percent. Such moves may seem tiny, but they involve a lot of people. If 64.8 percent of the working-age population still was working, total employment would be more than five million people greater than it actually is. In any case, the rise in self-employment seems to be one bright spot. The increase of 156,000 self-employed workers means they now account for 6.6 percent of the people in the household survey who say they are working, up from 6.1 percent when President Bush took office. Without that growth, it would be far harder to put a rosy tint on the employment record. But with them, it is possible to point to one government survey that indicates that more people are working now than at any time before. nytimes.com

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (504741)	12/6/2003 1:34:22 AM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 769667

Evidence also will come from the excavation of mass graves that dot the Iraqi landscape. There are some 270 mass graves believed to hold at least 300,000 sets of remains. Forensic teams are expected to start excavating a few for evidence in late January, according to an AP investigation. Human rights workers said the trials could include genocide cases -- for a campaign against Kurds in northern Iraq in the 1980s, and for the draining of southern marshes in 1992 that drove many Shiites from their homes. They also could include cases against former Iraqi officials for the massacres of Shiites and Kurds in 1991, when those communities rose up against Saddam at the end of the Gulf War. The tribunal will use a combination of laws, according to people who have seen a draft of the plan, including the Iraqi penal code of 1969 and the Iraqi criminal code of 1971. In addition, the new charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity -- taken from international courts -- will be added, they said. AP: Iraq Set to Form War Crimes Tribunal By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 11:09 p.m. ET