The Memory Hole > Previously Unreleased Economic and Labor Briefings from the Dept of Labor

Previously Unreleased Economic and Labor Briefings from the Dept of Labor

This zip file is 11.4 meg. It contains 51 Acrobat files that total 31 meg when unzipped.

>>> Almost every week since 11 September 2003, the Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration [here] has prepared a "Briefing on Economic and Labor Market Conditions" to provide Department employees with capsule articles on employment and economic news. With the exception of one leaked issue, these reports have never been made available to the public until now.

The first public mention of these reports appears to be a small Washington Post article, "A Labored Projection" by Dana Milbank (31 October 2004) [second item here]. The 22 Oct 2004 edition of the briefing predicted that Bush would win the then-upcoming election. Based on this mention of a heretofore unacknowledged regular report, DC-area researcher Michael Ravnitzky filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the entire run of the briefings. They are in the zip file above.

Hilariously, the Labor Department's FOIA Office chose not release the one briefing that caused the controversy (22 Oct 2004). Luckily, the Post posted it along with their article, so we've included it in the zip archive.

Sample Title Page

Technical note: The briefings were released in PDF format by the Department of Labor on 04 March 2005 in response to a FOIA request by Michael Ravnitzky, filed on 01 Nov 2004.

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