In September, according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics, Oklahoma City's unemployment was just 5.9%.

ECONOMIST: Not exactly a boom state, but people are returning

And according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labour Statistics, time has changed little.

ECONOMIST: Blacks are faring much worse than whites in this recession

According to the Bureau of Labour Statistics, 28, 000 jobs have been lost since May 2000.

ECONOMIST: The Philadelphia mayor's race: Enter the FBI | The

First, the Bureau of Labour Statistics changed its surveying techniques in 1994 to make a better job of measuring marginal workers.

ECONOMIST: No part-time job explosion

The Bureau of Labour Statistics also revised the figure for August from a loss of 4, 000 jobs to a gain of 89, 000.

ECONOMIST: Business this week

The demand for computer-support specialists and software engineers, to take two examples, is expected by the Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS) to double between 2000 and 2010.

ECONOMIST: The great hollowing-out myth | The

All that remains is the assumption that, between now and 1999, the Bureau of Labour Statistics (which calculates the index) will make a minor fiddle to reduce it by 0.15%.

ECONOMIST: Agreeing to be nice does not solve America��s problems

Evidence from the American Bureau of Labour Statistics support the conservative argument that they have used their power to extract a wage premium: public-sector workers earn, on average, a third more than their private-sector counterparts.

ECONOMIST: Public-sector workers

China has the world's largest manufacturing workforce: more than 112m people at the end of 2006, according to Erin Lett, formerly of America's Bureau of Labour Statistics, and Judith Banister of the Conference Board, who include enterprises in China's towns and villages, where 70% of its metal-bashers work.

ECONOMIST: China's labour market