[PEN-L:868] BLS Daily Report

[Richardson_D]

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BLS DAILY REPORT, THURSDAY, AUGUST 13, 1998

RELEASED TODAY:  The U.S. Import Price Index declined 0.9 percent in
July.  The decrease, the ninth in a row, was attributable to declines
for both petroleum and nonpetroleum import prices.  The U.S. Export
Price Index dipped 0.1 percent in July, after falling 0.6 percent in
June....  

The total number of on-the-job fatalities remained essentially stable in
1997, with steep declines in homicides and air crashes offsetting
increases in highway deaths, fatal falls, and other incidents, BLS
said....  (Daily Labor Report, page D-11).  

Labor Secretary Herman unveils a new national campaign aimed at
informing farm workers of their workplace rights and helping them teach
their children to be safe around farm work, which last year was the
second most dangerous occupation in the country....  (Daily Labor
Report, page A-2).

Despite the current tight labor market, there will be little upward
pressure on wages during 1999, and competition will continue to govern
employers' compensation planning, a human resources consulting firm
says.  Salary increases will be "moderate" - between 4 and 4.2 percent -
and largely unchanged from 1998 levels, according to a survey of
employers made by William M. Mercer Inc.  The survey collected data from
mid- to large-size employers on their pay increase budgets for 1999.
The survey represents the projections of 1,561 companies employing 10.9
million workers....  (Daily Labor Report, page A-6).

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, in reports casting more gloom over
the stumbling farm economy, slashed its forecasts for wheat, cattle, and
hog prices and predicted that the drought in the South will shrink the
U.S. cotton crop by 24 percent from last year....  The problem for U.S.
farmers is that the Asian currency crisis is killing the appetites of
farmers' biggest foreign customers at a time when many of the globe's
farm powers are preparing to reap bumper crops.  The prices of many U.S.
farm commodities are falling back to the levels of the early 1990s....
(Wall Street Journal, page A2).

America's economic system does work better than the obvious
alternatives, says Peter Passell in "Economic Scene" (New York Times,
page D2)....  Europe's mixed economies perch on a powder keg of 20
percent youth unemployment - and can't think of any way out, save for
the risky strategy of following the advice of Alexander Hamilton and
adopting a common currency.  But the celebration may be getting out of
hand.  For while the American system is doing many things right, most
economists would agree that it is doing one big thing wrong:  For the
last quarter century, virtually all the bounty of growth has gone to the
educated, enterprising, and already affluent....  While labor still
captures about two-thirds of national income, only skilled workers have
benefited.  And even within this elite, the phenomenon of "winner take
all" has increased the gaps between the successful and the also-rans in
occupations as diverse as law, plumbing, and basketball....  

DUE OUT TOMORROW:  Producer Price Indexes -- July 1998

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