BLS DAILY REPORT, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1997:
Today's News Release: "U.S. Import and Export Price Indexes - November
1997" indicates that the U.S. Import Price Index fell 0.3 percent in
November. The decrease was attributable to a turnaround in petroleum
prices, as well as the continuing decline in nonpetroleum import prices.
The Export Price Index was unchanged in November, after decreasing in
each of the previous 2 months.
State and local governments accounted for 14.5 percent of the net
increase in nonfarm payroll jobs in the 1990s, according to a new report
released by the Rockefeller Institute of Government's Center of the
Study of the States. The percentage of nonfarm payroll jobs in state
and local government in the 1990-96 period varies widely among the
states, ranging from 10.4 percent in Nevada to 23.2 percent in Wyoming.
"The record of the 1990s confirms once again the major role of state and
local governments as a key source of jobs in the American Economy," says
Samuel M. Ehrenhalt, the report's author (Daily Labor Report, page A-1).
Women in the United States and Canada have made the most progress of all
female workers in breaking through the "glass ceiling" into middle
management positions, but women worldwide continue to be blocked from
the very top management jobs, the International Labor Organization says.
ILO prepared its report "Breaking through the Glass Ceiling: Women in
Management" for next week's meeting in Geneva of governments, employers,
and workers from 20 countries to develop strategies to improve women's
opportunities for management and top level positions. Women in
management tend to be clustered in certain jobs to the point where these
jobs are almost "feminized". These jobs, which include personnel and
labor relations managers, are less likely to lead to top management
jobs, according to the report. The hurdles facing women aspiring to
management jobs fan be so formidable that they sometimes abandon efforts
to make it to the top of the firm and instead form their own businesses,
the report says (Daily Labor Report, page A-8).
John M. Berry, writing in The Washington Post (page E1) says that
Inflation in the United States has dropped to a 2 percent rate, the
upper end of a range that many economists believe essentially represents
price stability, a magical realm that every nation's central bank would
like to shoot for in its monetary policy. Actual inflation over the
past year has been so low that it may well meet Fed Chairman Alan
Greenspan's test for price stability - not a zero inflation rate, but
rather one low enough that it no longer is a factor in economic
decisions made by consumers and business executives. The decline in
inflation has already had a big payoff. It has allowed the Fed to let
the nation's unemployment rate slip gradually to the lowest level in a
quarter-century without having to stamp on the monetary brakes to keep
inflation under control. In past episodes of such low joblessness, the
Fed has rais3ed interest rates sharply to combat worsening inflation.
Data in the accompanying chart is attributed to the Labor Department.
Diplomats from more than 160 nations meeting in Kyoto, Japan, approved
the world's most sweeping environmental treaty, which requires
industrial nations to cut emissions of "greenhouse gases" to between 6
and 8 percent below 1990 levels staring in the year 2008 (The Wall
Street Journal, page A2). An accompanying article to the Kyoto decision
says that economists warn that the agreement to cure global warming, if
implemented, could end up cooling the U.S. economy. Trying to figure the
costs of bringing down carbon-dioxide emissions 7 percent below 1990
levels, beginning in 2008, won't be easy. As a result, there are
massive differences in the ways experts see the potential economic
fallout. Among other results that some fear are soaring energy prices,
and massive layoffs of American workers. Should energy prices shoot up,
six big U.S. industries - aluminum, cement, chemicals, oil, paper and
steel - could suffer jobs cuts, concludes an analysis by the U.S. Energy
Department.
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