The Bush administration ... has quietly killed off a Labor Department program that tracked mass layoffs by U.S. companies. The statistic ... comprised an easy-to-understand overview of which industries are in the greatest distress and which workers are bearing the brunt of the turmoil. Sharon Brown oversaw compilation of the mass-layoffs number at the Bureau of Labor Statistics in Washington. This was a high-quality program, producing timely information on important developments in the labor market," Brown said. The $6.6 million in annual funding for the mass-layoffs program ... was channeled through the Labor Department's Employment and Training Administration. When that agency decided it needed more cash ... the Bureau of Labor Statistics was told to look elsewhere for its budget needs. Apparently no extra money was to be found anywhere within the Labor Department, which had a total budget of $44.4 billion last year, up from $39.2 billion in 2001. The same conclusion was reached in 1992 when the first President Bush canceled the Mass-Layoffs Statistics program. Now Bush the younger is following in his father's footsteps, once again deciding that the American people have no real need to know how many mass layoffs are made each month.

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