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COPYRIGHT 2001 The Miami Herald
Byline: Gregg Fields
Apr. 30--It's a question that has begun to baffle economists:
Where are all the unemployed people?
For months now, the headlines have been filled with the news that thousands of people are being thrown out of their jobs. Coupled with an economy that was judged to be entering a recession, it was a given in recent weeks that pink slips would mount.
So why in the midst of a downturn has unemployment ticked up only to 4.3 percent -- a level that it rarely fell to at the height of previous expansions?
The answer, according an extensive new study, is this:
Don't believe everything you hear.
The evidence suggests that corporations, for a whole host of reasons that have little to do with manpower needs, greatly overestimate the number of jobs they ultimately cut. These reasons include satisfying stock-market analysts, doing too little research before they announce the cuts, and the fact that workers who fear they're about to get axed are likely to jump to a competitor first.
Meanwhile, structural...
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