DATE: Tuesday, May 27, 1997                 TAG: 9705270055

SECTION: BUSINESS                PAGE: D1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY LON WAGNER, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   54 lines

HAMPTON ROADS ASKS TO BE PART OF VEC STATISTICS RULES KEEP REGION OFF CHARTS, WHICH COULD CUT RECRUITMENT OF MANUFACTURERS, OFFICIALS SAY.

Call it what you prefer: Hampton Roads, Tidewater or the Norfolk-Virginia Beach-Newport News MSA.

Just don't look for it on the Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly ``Employment and Earnings'' chart on manufacturing wages.

Other Virginia metro areas are there: Richmond-Petersburg, Northern Virginia, Roanoke . . . even Bristol.

The slight has the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission petitioning the Virginia Employment Commission to change its statistical reporting practices. It seems the Bureau of Labor Statistics can't put Hampton Roads on its chart because the VEC won't disclose the numbers.

Why? The VEC's guidelines prohibit it from disclosing wages in any industrial sector that is dominated by a particular company. In the 1980s, Newport News Shipbuilding had so many workers that publishing that sector's wages would give somebody a good idea how much the massive shipyard paid.

``We never could publish the wages on Hampton Roads, because shipbuilding is about half of manufacturing,'' said William F. Mezger, senior economist at the VEC. ``Of course, Newport News was a bigger chunk of manufacturing when they were up around 30,000 employees or so.''

The VEC's numbers come from a voluntary survey of companies. Newport News Shipbuilding participates while other companies choose not to, which gives more weight to the massive shipyard's employment numbers.

Sean LaCroix, an economic planner at the Planning District Commission, stumbled across the area's omission on BLS' charts when he was looking for a number from another area.

LaCroix and the commission are convinced that Hampton Roads' omission from the chart could hurt its efforts to recruit manufacturers.

``Our manufacturing wages are below the national average,'' LaCroix said, ``and that's something I think the region would like people to see when they're considering moving here.''

The region's manufacturing companies are significantly diverse these days, LaCroix said. Newport News Shipbuilding's work force has dropped to nearly 18,000. And other manufacturers such as Gateway 2000, Canon and Stihl now make up a larger percentage of the sector, Mezger noted.

The VEC is investigating.

Incidentally, there may be only one other major metropolitan area that faces the same wrinkle as Hampton Roads: Seattle, where Boeing is the dominant manufacturer. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]

STAFF/File photo

In the 1980s, Newport News Shipbuilding had so many workers that

publishing the region's wages would give somebody a good idea how

much the shipyard paid, which is prohibited under VEC guidelines.

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