[PEN-L:1432] BLS Daily Report

[Richardson_D]

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BLS DAILY REPORT, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1998

U.S. purchasing executives see business conditions improving in 1999, with
68 percent of those surveyed expecting higher revenues than in 1998 - though
less robust growth than they reported a year ago, the National  Association
of Purchasing Management says. ...  NAPM also released a semiannual outlook
for the nonmanufacturing sector, which is broadly more optimistic than the
manufacturing one. ...  (Daily Report, page A-5)_____United States
manufacturers are less optimistic about the coming year, expecting revenues
will rise at a slower pace than in 1998, while nonmanufacturing companies
are more upbeat. ...  (New York Times, page C7).

Despite the country's economic prosperity, data from the Census Bureau's
1997 Current Population Survey show that single mothers and displaced
homemakers have low employment rates and are working in the lowest paying
jobs, according to a report by Women Work!  The National Network for Women's
Employment. ...  (Daily Report, page A-2).

The proportion of the U.S. population under age 65 with employment-based
health coverage grew from 63.5 percent at the end of 1996, to 64.2 percent
at the end of 1997, but the number of uninsured people grew from 17.7
percent to 18.3 percent over the same period, the Employee Benefit Research
Institute finds. ...  (Daily Labor Report, page A-7).

"Housing has a tremendous impact on the economy," said an economist at
Norwest Bank in Minneapolis.  "People have said one out of every six jobs in
America is housing or related industries.  The largest user of copper in the
world, or at least in America, is housing.  The demand for lumber, aluminum,
carpets, all these things, are affected by housing."  Right now, that demand
is sky high, helping the economy by offsetting some of the drop in demand
for exports from ailing Asian economies.  That's' because the percentage of
Americans owning their own homes is at an all-time high of 66.8 percent.
That's an increase from the 1997 rate of 65.7 percent, which broke a record
set back in 1980, when the rate stood at 65.6 percent.  Housing experts
credit the strong economic combination of low inflation and low interest
rates for the high ownership. ...  (Washington Post "Trendlines" feature by
Tim Smart, page C11).  

Age bias is still a fact of life in Corporate America, a graph in Business
Week (Dec. 14, page 8) indicates.  A survey of 35-to-60-year-old job-seekers
showed that the older they were, the fewer interviews they got, and the
longer it took them to find a job.  The survey was by Exe-U-Net.

Producer Prices of Finished Goods were probably unchanged in November, after
falling 0.2 percent in October, says Business Week (Dec. 14, page 175).
Excluding food and energy, the core index likely edged up 0.1 percent, the
same tiny advance posted in October.  


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