BLS DAILY REPORT, THURSDAY, JANUARY 23, 1997 RELEASED TODAY: The U.S. Import Price Index increased 0.1 percent in December. The advance followed a decline of 0.2 percent in November. The U.S. Export Price Index was unchanged in December, after declining in each of the six preceding months .... Good news from the inequity front: Some of the biggest gains in wealth in the last few years have come among working-class Americans, says Steven Pearlstein in The Washington Post feature "Trendlines (page E1) ....While annual incomes of Americans are becoming more unequal, the disparities in wealth actually may be narrowing. A Fed survey shows that net worth for the typical household didn't change much from 1989 to 1995. But increased home ownership and retirement savings have boosted the wealth of clerks, office workers, and less skilled blue-collar workers .....That's the evidence from the Federal Reserve Board's latest survey of family finances. While the Census Bureau makes regular soundings on family incomes, the Fed's once-every-three-years survey is the government's only gauge of family wealth, toting up financial assets such as stocks and bonds, nonfinancial assets such as houses and cars, and all types of offsetting consumer debt .... For most of the last two decades, the suburbs around New York City accounted for the bulk of the region's job growth. But last year, the city broke that pattern, adding more jobs than all the suburbs combined ....Of the 70,000 net new private jobs added in the 27-county region tracked by BLS, 37,000 were in the five boroughs of New York City -- a slim majority, but a majority nonetheless. Over most of the last 17 years, the city has never come even close to that. Through the boom years for job creation from 1979 to 1988, for example, New York accounted for only about one quarter of the one million new jobs created in the region. The changing balance between the growth rates of city and suburbs is partly because suburban job creation has slowed. "The city is driving the growth," said John L. Wieting, the New York regional commissioner for the statistical bureau. "That's a break in the historic pattern" ....An accompanying graph cites BLS as its source (New York Times, page B8). __The U.S. economic picture remained largely unchanged in December and early January, with most of the Fed's 12 district banks reporting continued, moderate growth, ongoing shortages of skilled labor, and scattered signs of wage pressures, but little evidence of rising inflation ....(Daily Labor Report, page D-5). __Economic growth last month and early this month "was moderate in most parts of the country" and, except for energy prices, inflation pressures also were moderate. The survey, published in the so-called beige book, also found that wages weren't rising more rapidly than they had been, even though labor markets are very tight in many areas ....(Washington Post, page E3). __Inflation remained subdued, despite continued "moderate" growth of the economy, the Fed's periodic survey of business conditions in all geographic areas showed ...."District reports provided scattered evidence of increasing wage pressures, particularly for skilled workers, but in general did not indicate significant price pressures other than for energy items," the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco said, summarizing the findings ....The Fed mistakenly posted the survey on the Internet nearly two hours before its new official release time of 2 p.m. Bob Moore, a Fed aide, said "We broke out own embargo" but added that officials did not yet know whether the error was related to the fact that, until now, the beige book was published at noon. Economic announcements such as this one often move the stock and bond markets, so the releases are carefully timed to prevent some traders from getting unfair advantages from advance knowledge of the data. Moore said the Fed had received no complaints from traders about the early release of the beige book report ....(New York Times, page D1). __The economy rolled into 1997 at a decidedly "moderate" pace, with scant evidence of inflation ....The labor market remains tight in most areas, leading to some wage pressures ....The Fed inadvertently posted the text of the report on its World Wide Web home page more than an hour before its 2 p.m. embargo. The early release was unintentional, a spokesman said. The Fed's data-processing division accidentally put the report up on the site before any members of the press were allowed to release it. The report, however, didn't carry any news that would have rocked financial markets (Wall Street Journal, page A2). Housing starts fell sharply in December by 12.2 percent, with declines in the four major regions, show data released by the Commerce Department. For all of 1996, however, starts of privately owned housing gained 8.8 percent over 1995. Economists expect housing construction to moderate this year compared with 1996, which was the strongest year since 1988 ....(Daily Labor Report, page D-1)_____The drop in December was due mostly to wet weather in the West ....(Wall Street Journal, page A2). DUE OUT TOMORROW: Usual Weekly Earnings of Wage and Salary Workers: Fourth Quarter 1996
