BLS DAILY REPORT, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 1998
RELEASED TODAY:
CPI - The CPI-U was unchanged in January (seasonally adjusted),
following increases of 0.1 percent in each of the preceding two months.
The food index advanced 0.3 percent in January ….The energy index
declined 2.4 percent ….Excluding food and energy, the CPI-U rose 0.2
percent, the same as in December ….
REAL EARNINGS - Real average weekly earnings increased by 0.9 percent
from December to January after seasonal adjustment. This gain was due
to a 0.6 percent increase in average weekly hours and a 0.3 percent
increase in average hourly earnings. The gain was not affected by the
CPI-W ….Over the year, real average weekly earnings grew by 3.4 percent
….
"What's in the New CPI; A Restocked Market Basket; BLS's Changes Likely
To Lower Federal COLAs" are the headlines on an article by John M. Berry
on page B1 of The Washington Post. The article says that "For the first
time in more than a decade, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has
updated, reorganized and refined the 'market basket' of goods and
services its checkers price each month to create the CPI" …._____Besides
the articles cited yesterday, clippings on the CPI revision also were
received from: Associated Press, "Government Updating Inflation Gauge";
Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "Consumer Price Index to increase Atlanta
reports" ;Christian Science Monitor, "Inflation's Spring Makeover";
Oakland Tribune, "U.S. planning to update CPI; Inflation measure
expected to drop"; Reuters, "Revisions cloud U.S. January CPI; tiny gain
predicted"; and St. Petersburg, Fla., Times, "Overhaul pushes CPI into
the '90s."
The "Office Economy," broadly defined to include managers, lawyers,
CEOs, janitors, and brokers, has 41 percent of all workers, pays the
highest salaries - and its jobs will grow by five million by the year
2005, a study by the Educational Testing Service, Princeton, N.J.,
shows. As production jobs move overseas, for example, lots of people
are needed to manage the business, ETS says. In temporary work,
professional jobs like marketers are the fastest growing, says Jean Ban,
executive vice president of Paladin, a Chicago temp firm. But the
biggest increases at Texas Instruments, Inc., a Dallas electronics
company, will be in engineering, not sales staff, says a staffing
official (Wall Street Journal, "Work Week", page A1).
Union membership fell again in 1997, to 14.1 percent of employment from
14.5 percent in 1996, the Labor Department said (Wall Street Journal,
"Work Week," page A1).
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