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Internet Use Continues to Grow
According to a recently released study by Nielsen/Net Ratings, the number of Internet users worldwide today is nearly a half billion. The Nielsen/Net Ratings Global Internet Trends Report found that for the first quarter of this year, the number of people who have access to the Web has now expanded an estimated 429 million.
Not surprisingly, most of the world’s Internet users continue to come from North America, with our country and Canada accounting for 41% of global usage. We, in turn, are followed by Europe, the Middle East and Africa who place second in that grouping, with 27% of that share, while the Asian Pacific region accounts for 20% and Latin America just 4%. Of course, stating the obvious and skewing the numbers are people’s ability to pay for Internet access and to have a computer. So it only stands to reason that the wealthier countries will have greater usage.
Nielsen/Net Ratings said its global report covered some 27 countries in North America, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Asian Pacific region. The report found that just over a quarter of European households have Internet access via a home PC, compared with a third of the households in the Asian pacific area, and nearly half of all American households have access to the Internet. They note, however, that the picture is changing rapidly and that U.S. dominance of the Internet is dropping as the rest of the world gains access and goes online.
Of course, today and especially in our country, the Internet is more than just video games or even shopping. The Internet is, after all, about communication. That includes e-mail, and guess whose starting to complain about e-mail? The U.S. Congress. They claim there is something of an epidemic in Congress, as constituents and special interest groups display an increasing appetite for blanketing legislators with electronic opinions of every sort. According to statistics from the Congressional Management Foundation, the House of Representatives was hit with more than 50 million e-mails last year, up about two million from 1998. The Senate got hit with 27 million messages last year, 15 times what it was just four years ago. The report found that growth is coming from a combination of forces, with 24-hour news cycles that have turned even obscure members of Congress into national figures and polarizing issues which have gotten people stirred up. According to Washington insiders there’s another problem; that is, while Congressional e-mails are growing by leaps and bounds in volume, the staff, expected to field all those incoming emails is not growing. Interestingly enough, there’s been no apparent drop in the postal mail or faxes that come in to Congressional offices. The email is just a new method of communication over and above the old method, which kept many, many people busy and still does. In an effort to keep up with the mess, Congress has installed faster processors and ten times the number of computer routers that it had just a few years ago, but it is still being overwhelmed. Unfortunately, because of the overall volume, the study found that of the more than 80 million emails sent to Congress last year, nearly half were ignored, simply because everybody is so bogged down by the volume.
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As we move toward summer, the job market for America’s young is heating up again. A recent survey shows that more kids today are waiting on tables, ringing cash registers, or doing other odd jobs, than their parents did a generation ago. According to a recent survey out of Minneapolis, 81% of our young people old enough to work will hold a summer job this year, compared with about 72% of their parents at a similar age. The survey, released last month, was conducted among 1,000 parents across the country. As for what happens to the money after it is earned, 60% of the kids say they spend their money, 36% say they save it. And, by the way, 6% actually kick back at least some of their money to help the family budget. How about that? * * *
By the way, we haven’t mentioned it for a while, but if there are questions you’d like answered, topics you would like me to comment on, or comments of your own that pertaining to economic matters, just send a letter or a postcard addressed to: Tom Butenhoff c/o Liss Financial Services, 424 East Wisconsin Avenue, Milwaukee, WI 53202.
(Tom Butenhoff is a First Vice President with J. E. Liss and Company, Inc.
in Milwaukee. The views are his, and not necessarily those of Liss
Financial Services or the Job Connection/Hiring
Network.)