This message is in MIME format. Since your mail reader does not understand this format, some or all of this message may not be legible. ------_=_NextPart_000_01BE8774.FA49B320 BLS DAILY REPORT, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 14, 1999 RELEASED TODAY: In October through December of 1998, there were 1,660 mass layoff actions by employers that resulted in the separation of 342,010 workers from their jobs for more than 30 days. While layoff events were essentially unchanged from the fourth quarter of 1997, the number of separations was higher and the proportion of events with expectations of worker recall was lower in fourth quarter 1998. For the 4 quarters of 1998, the total of extended layoff events, at 5,759, and worker separations, at 1,163,805, were slightly higher than in 1997 (5,645 and 1,112,513 respectively). ... __The consumer price index for all urban consumers rose a moderate 0.2 percent, seasonally adjusted, in March, despite a sharp increase in petroleum costs, BLS reports. "Based on secondary data from the Department of Energy, it appears energy prices will go up further in the month of April," says BLS economist Patrick Jackman. "The only [inflation] issue is short-term gasoline prices." ... Helping hold down the advance in the CPI-U, core prices -- excluding food and energy prices which often have sharp monthly increases and decreases -- rose just 0.1 percent in March. The core index edged up 0.1 percent in each of the prior two months. The core rose at a compounded annual rate of 0.9 percent in the first quarter of 1999, the slowest quarterly increase since the third quarter of 1964, when the index was unchanged. ... (Daniel J. Roy in Daily Labor Report, page D-1). Real average weekly earnings slipped 0.2 percent in March, after adjustments for seasonal variations, BLS reports. ... (Daily Labor Report, page D-21). After more than a year of robust gains, the pace of wage increases for American workers is slowing. Average hourly earnings in March rose just 1.8 percent compared with a year earlier, adjusted for inflation, BLS says. That was the smallest year-over-year increase since November 1997 and followed a steady deceleration in wage increases since last spring, when inflation-adjusted wages were growing each month by nearly 3 percent from year-earlier levels. The slowdown comes as a surprise to economists, since it has occurred while unemployment, already considered low, has fallen. ... In a separate report, the Labor Department said inflation remained tame last month. ... Analysts cautioned against concluding too much from the latest wage reports. The pay slowdown is relatively new and could just be a blip in a data series that can be volatile. Besides, this wage series, though widely used, has statistical flaws that could provide a distorted picture of compensation trends. For one thing, the figure doesn't adjust for the fact that workers generally get paid more for working overtime. So a rise in overtime hours worked, as happened in 1997 and 1998, would look like a pay raise, and a drop in overtime work, as has occurred in recent months, would look like a pay cut. The wage data also include just 70 percent of the work force -- those labeled nonsupervisory production workers -- and exclude many salaried workers and all managers. Still, other government statistics seem to reinforce the possibility of a wage slowdown. The Labor Department's quarterly employment cost index, which corrects for many of the flaws in the wage series, was 2.2 percent higher in December 1998 than a year earlier, adjusted for inflation. That was down from a 2.7 percent rise in the September report. The data for the first quarter of 1999 will be released later this month and will help show whether the latest wage data are a fluke or the start of a trend. ... (Jacob M. Schlesinger and Alejandro Bodipo-Memba in Wall Street Journal, page A2). Retail sales rose 0.2 percent in March, following strong gains in January and February, the Commerce Department says. Total sales In March reflected a 0.6 percent gain in sales of nondurable goods. ... (Daily Labor Report, page D-25). "Ho-hum. Month after month, the U.S. economic picture never varies: Consumers spend like mad, the economy grows rapidly, unemployment falls, and inflation, defying economic gravity, stays low," writes John M. Berry in the Washington Post (page E3). So it went again last month, according to government reports on inflation and consumer spending. BLS reported that the consumer price index rose 0.2 percent last month, largely because of a 3.7 percent jump in gasoline prices in the wake of a huge rise in world crude oil costs. But gasoline prices aside, few prices were going up. ... Patrick C. Jackman, a senior CPI analyst, said the March CPI report did not pick up all of the increases that have occurred in gasoline prices and airline fares because they took place after last month's survey of prices was begun. ... Meanwhile, the Commerce Department said that retail sales rose only 0.2 percent for March, but that consumers had spent far more in January and February than previous thought. The department revised upward the retail sales gain for February to 1.7 percent from 0.9 percent and the gain for January to 1.3 percent from 1 percent. ... __Retailers rang up stronger sales for an eighth consecutive month during March, as tame inflation helped foster a shoppers' paradise of high spending power in a robust economy. ... (Reuters story in New York Times, page C11). The Labor Department takes exception to charges that it has done "little" to improve the accuracy of Davis-Bacon Act prevailing wage determinations in a letter to Sen. Bond (R-Mo.). ... One of the initiatives underway is using the BLS redesigned Occupational Employment Statistics survey as the primary basis for Davis-Bacon wage determinations. ... (Daily Labor Report, page A-7). In a nation of technophiles, where internet millionaires are minted daily, it seems heresy to question the economic payoff from information technology -- the billions upon billions spent each year by companies and households on everything from computers to software cell phones. But for more than a decade, most of the nation's leading economists have been heretics. "You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics," Robert M. Solow, a Nobel Prize winner from MIT once said. ... For years, even as the computer revolutionized the workplace, "measured productivity" stagnated, barely advancing 1 percent a year. ... But now, productivity growth has picked up, starting in 1996, capped by a surge in the second half of last year, after 8 years of economic expansion. That has drawn attention because past upward swings in productivity typically occurred early in a recovery as economic activity rebounded. ... The question, posed by economists, is whether the higher productivity growth averaging about 2 percent in the last 3 years, roughly double the pace from 1973 to 1995, is the long-awaited confirmation that the nation's steadily rising investment in computers and communications is finally paying off. The evidence is starting to point in that direction. ... In a paper that has just been published in the quarterly "Business Economics," Daniel E. Sichel, an economist with the Federal Reserve, wrote that his new work points to "a striking step up in the contribution of computers to output growth." And the nation's improved productivity performance, he noted, is "raising the possibility that businesses are finally reaping the benefit of information technology." ... Edwin R. Dean, chief of the productivity division of BLS, wrote in a recent research paper that the agency is increasingly concerned that its measurements do not "fully reflect changes in the quality of goods and services" or "capture the full impact of new technology on economic performance." Still, the government's methods of measurement will not be overhauled anytime soon. "These are tough, tough questions and we are not going to get instant solutions," Dean said in an interview. ... (Steve Lohr in New York Times, page A1). 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