NEW YORK – First, the good news: More than 24.5 million Americans have signed up for the federal do-not-call registry, finally forcing pesky telemarketers to stuff a sock in it.

Now, the bad news: Industry insiders say the price of a call-free dinner hour could be as many as 2 million people out of work nationwide – most of them members of minority groups, single mothers or the handicapped.

Unemployment lines will swell, they say, and hundreds of thousands of workers could be forced onto the dole.

Government officials, however, say telemarketers’ predictions of Armageddon in the cold-call world are wildly exaggerated.

“If they were to lose 2 million employees, the national unemployment rate would skyrocket from 6.4 percent to 7.7 percent,” said Steven Kaggan, New York State’s chief economist. “There would be a depression.”

Kaggan called industry estimates “somewhat unlikely.” But the fact is that no one knows for sure.

No federal or New York State agency has bothered to study the economic and social impact of the potential job loss. Not the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Not the Federal Trade Commission or the Federal Communications Commission, which teamed up to forge the new law.

Not the state Labor Department or the Empire State Development Corp., which has helped several telemarketing companies locate in depressed upstate areas.

President Bush announced the registry law with a flourish in a Rose Garden ceremony late last month – you can register online at www.donotcall.gov or call toll-free, (888) 382-1222.

The government predicts that by Oct. 1, when the registry goes into effect, 60 million Americans will have joined.

That’s anathema to telemarketers.

“When you have 104 million (telemarketing cold calls) made each evening and you take 60 million off the list, we estimate that about one-third of all employees will lose their jobs,” said Tim Searcy, executive director of the American Teleservices Association. “It’s obvious – they will have no pool to call.”

The Direct Marketing Association, another trade group, says 4 million people nationwide are employed in all aspects of the telemarketing industry. About 300,000 of them work in New York State, where around 100,000 people are directly involved in hawking goods and services over the phone.

The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, however, has tracked only 437,510 people nationwide whose occupation is listed as telemarketer. The disparity has not been resolved.

But no one has disputed the industry’s claim that 33 percent of its workforce (whatever the number may be) will be jobless if 60 million phones are blocked from receiving telemarketers’ calls.

“It is very scary to think how many people could lose their jobs,” said Sheila Williams, one of 500 employees working the phones for Telemarketing Concepts, based in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. “This is how I make ends meet and pay my bills.”

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The first to fall under the job ax will be what the industry calls B2C (business to consumer) outbound callers. That is, the folks who call at dinnertime, mispronounce your name, then harass you with pitches for low-interest credit cards or pleas to hire a chimney cleaner.

Many will not be able to find other jobs. They are, said Searcy, “among the hardest Americans to employ.” He provided this breakdown:

-64 percent are members of minority groups;

-30 percent do not have high school diplomas;

-30 percent come from welfare-to-work programs;

-26 percent are single mothers;

-5 percent are physically disabled.

“This is not a good time to be looking for a job, especially upstate in the areas where the call centers are located,” said Marc Goloven, senior regional economist for JPMorganChase. “Telemarketing jobs are coveted replacements for lost factory jobs.”

Goloven noted that call centers typically are in areas with “slack labor market conditions” and attract workers “who have few other employment options.” Layoffs “clearly will put a burden on government resources,” he said.

And, some economists fear, there will be a domino effect in other industries.

Insurance companies and financial-services outlets, which rely heavily on telemarketing, have the resources to advertise through direct mail and E-mail spam. But many small personal-service companies and repair businesses – which combined to spend a staggering $1.4 billion in 2001 to hawk products by phone – are less likely to bounce back.

“Some fellow mowing your lawn may lose his job because the landscaping company he works for can’t offer services over the phone,” said Jim Conway of the Direct Marketing Association. “There’s going to be a trickle-down.”

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(c) 2003, New York Daily News.

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AP-NY-07-16-03 0615EDT