BLS DAILY REPORT, MONDAY AND TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29 AND 30, 1997 RELEASED ON TUESDAY: Most state unemployment rates showed little change in August, as 43 states recorded shifts of 0.3 percentage point or less from July. The national jobless rate, 4.9 percent, was little changed over the month. Nonfarm payroll employment rose in 28 states in August .... State and local government added nearly 1.5 million jobs in the 1990s, comprising 14.5 percent of the more than 10 million jobs added to the nonfarm economy, according to the Rockefeller Institute of Government's Center for the Study of the States. Local government was the key factor in the government employment rise from 1990 through 1996, with its employment growth placing it third among American growth industries in the size of its job increase, trailing only business services and health services. "The record of the 1990s confirms once again the major role of state and local government, particularly local government, as a key source of jobs in the American economy," observes Samuel M. Ehrenhalt, a senior fellow at the institute and former BLS regional commissioner. Budgetary constraints, extensive restructuring, and consequent downsizing have been prominent features of the political and economic scene of the 1990s, according to the report. However, state and local government employment development overall have been even more strongly shaped by the rising demand for services, spurred by increasing population and by the devolution of government functions ....The federal government has followed a very different path, with employment cut sharply by nearly 11 percent in the 1990s ....(Daily Labor Report, Sept. 29, page A-8). The Secretary of Education, along with senior officials of the Commerce and Labor Departments and industry executives, unveils an initiative aimed at addressing the growing shortage of U.S. information technology workers and releases a Commerce report that warns the shortfall could undermine U.S. productivity and competitiveness in world markets ....(Daily Labor Report, Sept. 30, page A-5)_____The report, titled "America's New Deficit: The Shortage of Information Technology Workers," repeated statistics produced by other organizations, including the Information Technology Association of America, which estimates about 190,000 information technology jobs nationwide are going unfilled. The report also cited Labor Department projections that, between now and 2005, an average of 95,000 new computer scientists, systems analysts, and programmers will be needed every year. In 1994, however, only 24,553 U.S. students earned bachelor's degrees in computer or information sciences fields, the Labor Department said ....(Washington Post, Sept. 30, page C3). Health care workers are the most likely to be the victims of violence in the workplace, say participants in the annual meeting of the Society of Professionals in Dispute Resolution. Physician E. Carroll Curtis reports that 45 percent of incidents of nonfatal injuries in the workplace, according to BLS data, are inflicted on health care employees, mostly by patients ....(Daily Labor Report, Sept. 30, page C-1). The Wall Street Journal's consensus forecast is for nonfarm payroll jobs in September (to be released Friday) to rise 325,000, the unemployment rate to be 4.8 percent, and average hourly earnings to increase 4 cents (Sept. 29, page A2). The behavior of inflation this year has been so at odds with past experience that it has forced many at the Federal Reserve to reexamine some of their thinking about how the economy works. There are two separate but related assumptions involved: First, Fed policymakers and most economists believed until recently that the economy could not grow on a sustained basis at a rate faster than 2 to 2.5 percent per year without straining the nation's production capacity and causing inflation to accelerate. Now many are asking whether the economy can grow faster without spurring inflation. Second, they thought they knew the level of unemployment at which inflation begins to worsen. Now they are asking whether that level has dropped. The answer to the first question is a head-scratching "maybe." The answer to the second, a number of Fed officials believe, is a pretty clear "yes." The reasons include both temporary economic influences, such as the rise in the value of the dollar, as well as possible structural changes in the economy, such as gains in efficiency and the recent expansion of worldwide production capacity. None of the central bank officials has ruled out the possibility that the drop in inflation to roughly a 2 percent rate ... is simply the result of a combination of favorable temporary developments ....(Washington Post, Sept. 30, page C1). The inflation-adjusted income of U.S. households rose 1.2 percent during 1996, while the poverty rate remained statistically unchanged, the Census Bureau reports. Median real household income reached $35,492 in 1996, increasing for the second consecutive year. Rising incomes did not cause the poverty rate to decline, however, with the number of people the government considers poor standing at 36.5 million and the poverty rate at 13.7 percent. But the Census Bureau says 1996 marked the third consecutive year without an increase in overall income disparity ....(Daily Labor Report, Sept. 30., page D-1; Wall Street Journal, Sept. 30, page A2)_____The rise in income for the second consecutive year signals that the economic expansion is spreading its benefits more widely across the population. While some pockets of society did not enjoy significant gains - more people lacked health insurance and the number considered "very poor" increased - overall the trend was positive. Women were among the winners: The earnings gap between men and women was the narrowest on record, the result of an increase for women and a small decrease for men. Last year, women working full time and year-round earned 74 cents for every dollar earned by men ....(Washington Post, Sept. 30, page A1)_____Women and blacks lead national income rise ....(Washington Times, page B7). Brightening economic fortunes are increasingly extending to racial and ethnic minorities and reaching farther down the economic ladder as the nation's recovery moves briskly through its sixth year, several reports indicate. The reports - income and poverty studies issued by the Census Bureau and a report on home ownership released by Harvard University - indicate that, in the last three years, the economic prospects for nearly all households have risen and that the gains among minorities have in some cases reached unprecedented levels ....The shrinking earnings gap between the sexes reflects more the decline of men's wages than an improvement of women's incomes. Recently, BLS reported that the income gap between men and women had in fact widened. But the bureau study looked at all workers, including temporary workers. In contrast, the Census Bureau looked only at full-time year-round employees. The Census Bureau reports also contained some gloomy news. While the growth in income for the richest 20 percent outpaced all other groups, the poorest 20 percent of the households had an income drop of 1.8 percent last year ....The Harvard study showed that economic gains by minorities helped fuel the country's residential real estate boom from 1993 through 1996. Demographers had predicted that the housing construction surge would slow in the 1990s as the baby-boom generation settled into more or less permanent housing. Instead, the number of homeowners grew by 3.4 million households in the period studied, with minority homeowners making up 29 percent of the increase ....(New York Times, Sept. 30, page A1). Personal income rose 0.6 percent in August while consumer spending advanced at a more modest 0.3 percent pace, reports BEA. Disposable personal income - or after-tax income - rose 0.5 percent. August's income gain was more than the revised July increase of 0.2 percent. At the same time, consumer spending - which is two-thirds of the nation's total output - eased from a strong July advance of 1.0 percent, reflecting a slowdown in purchases of durable goods such as autos ....(Daily Labor Report, Sept. 30, page D-11; New York Times, Sept. 30, page D8; Wall Street Journal, Sept. 30, page A8). The U.S. economy in the second quarter of the year grew 3.3 percent at an annual rate, not quite as strong as the 3.6 percent estimated earlier, the Commerce Department reports ....(Daily Labor Report, Sept. 29, page D-1)_____Consumer spending fell, but businesses kept investing in inventories and equipment ....(Washington Post, Sept. 27, page C2; Wall Street Journal, Sept. 29, page A2)_____The revised economic growth was still faster than what most analysts consider the economy's speed limit, above which inflation would revive ....(New York Times, Sept. 27, page B1). The freight industry is struggling to keep up with the booming economy, creating a gridlock that is slowing deliveries across the country ....(Wall Street Journal, Sept. 30, page A2).
