BLS DAILY REPORT, WEDNESDAY, JULY 10, 1996 A chart showing changes in the minimum wage, actual and adjusted for inflation, and attributed to BLS accompanies an article on Senate passage of a minimum wage raise (New York Times, page A1). Growth in the manufacturing sector moderated in the month of June, and prices for raw materials rose at a faster rate, the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond said ....In a separate survey of service-sector industries, the Richmond Fed said growth indicators "changed little" in June but were mixed for the retail component of that survey ....(Daily Labor Report, page A-9). In "Importing Poverty" on the op. ed. page of The Washington Post, Robert J. Samuelson says that, in any one year, new immigrants (about 800,000 of them legal and perhaps 300,000 illegal) don't much alter social conditions. But the cumulative impact is significant ....He cites the recent Rand Corp. study and other studies. "What Inflation?" is the title of an op. ed. article in The New York Times by James K. Galbraith, who teaches economics at the Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas. Galbraith writes: "The economic news on Friday was so good it was a disaster ....Pandemonium on Wall Street! ....Many of the bears said that had the Fed's Open Market Committee known at its meeting last Wednesday what the secretive Bureau of Labor Statistics would announce two days later, it would surely have raised [short-term interest rates] ....Nonsense. There is no cause for alarm. The evidence does not portend surging inflation. To begin with, the annual rate remains low: 2.9 percent in the year that ended in May. Inflation is not accelerating. Instead, productivity growth appears to be picking up. If this pattern continues, it will permit wages to grow for some time with little effect on price inflation. The decline in unemployment also means little ....Recent economic studies confirm that there is little reason to fear that prices will rise simply because of low unemployment -- or, for that matter, rapid growth. Most inflation of past decades had different causes, like oil shocks and war ....The bears in the bond market must ... know that their inflation warnings are unfounded. So what are they up to? The answer seems clear. We have a speculation problem not an inflation problem. The bears make their living by betting on the Fed's next decision, not by calling the economy ...." "Boxed In" is the title of an article by Lise Funderburg, author of "Black, White, Other: Biracial Americans Talk about Race and Identity," on The New York Times op. ed. page. She writes, "I'm black and white. Can't the census reflect that?" ....Funderburg says that recent experiments by the Census Bureau suggest that neither the multiracial box nor my proposal would significantly change the balance in any one category .... A Fed study outlines a new approach to monetary policy that may shed light on the Fed's recent decision to stand pat on interest rates. The theory, "opportunistic disinflation," holds that, when inflation is low, policy makers should wait for unforeseen recessions to make further progress against it, rather than steadily chipping away. The policy suggests the Fed might tolerate higher inflation, within limits ....(Wall Street Journal, page A2).
