30 Moore Business / Spring 2004

Each month when the news media report on the previousmonth’s unemployment rate in South Carolina, or the numberof new jobs created, or the inflation rate, you can thank JamesM. “Mike” Daniels II (BS ’88) for the useful information.

Daniels, 37, an award-winning research and planningadministrator with the South Carolina Employment SecurityCommission in Columbia, gathers and sifts though mounds ofdata each day to determine what’s really happening with theSouth Carolina economy. “People turn to us to know what’sgoing on,” he says.

As supervisor of special research for the Commission’sLabor Market Information (LMI) Department, the Columbianative coordinates multiple simultaneous projects, includingthe production of monthly press releases and the monthlystate economic indicators. A graceful writer, he pens LMI’spress releases himself and also puts together sophisticatedPowerPoint presentations that he takes on the road to explainstate economic trends.

Does he get bored always working with numbers? “No,”he replies. “I really enjoy this because I always want to lookbehind the numbers. I analyze data to try to figure out whatthose numbers really mean in terms of trends, in terms ofconsumer confidence.”

Daniels is a gifted prognosticator. Last year, he was oneof three winners honored nationally for job growth forecast-ing accuracy by the Bank One Economic Outlook Center inthe W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State Univer-sity. His competitors for that award included suchbehemoths as General Motors, DuPont, SchwabCapital Markets, and the state of Georgia’s Dr.Donald Ratajczak, but Daniels came away witha plaque and $1,000 prize.

“I was very pleasantly surprised,” he says,adding wryly that his wife “helped me spendthe money.”

Daniels is one of 25 economists in thenation who get out their crystal balls eachquarter and make their guesses for theNational Consensus Forecast of LaborEmployment, Compensation, and Produc-tivity, which is published in the Blue ChipJob Growth Update—the only consensusforecast of job growth in the nation. Theforecast was assembled three years ago toprovide key economic information to corpora-tions, government, economic developmentagencies, and the public.

ALUM FEATURE

Growing up in Columbia,Daniels began keeping apersonal diary as a teenager.“It includes what I’d like toaccomplish in the next threemonths,” he says. He alwaysgravitated toward business,and now uses the marketingskills he learned at the Moore School of Business when hegives presentations on the state’s economy to Rotary clubs andother organizations. “Each time I give a presentation, I’mmarketing our department,” he says.

An Employment Security Commission employee since1989, the energetic Daniels has redesigned the

Commission’s monthly newsletter on labormarket trends, and also helped redesign and

update the Commission’s Web site(www.sces.org) to make available a larger

variety of data to the public.He reads newspapers and magazines

continuously to stay on top of economicand labor market news nationally,

regionally, and statewide. “It’slike putting together thepieces of a puzzle,” hesays, explaining how hedetermines his numbersand trends. “It’s afascinating job.”— Jan K. Collins

Assembling the Pieces of the S.C. Economic Puzzle

Mike Daniels