[PEN-L:4477] BLS Daily Report

[Richardson_D]

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> BLS DAILY REPORT, MONDAY, MARCH 22, 1999:
> 
> Nonfarm payroll employment increased in 38 states in February, with
> Indiana and Wyoming reporting the largest percentage advance of 0.6
> percent each, BLS reports. The largest percentage declines in employment
> in February were in Idaho (0.3 percent), and Vermont and Nebraska (both
> 0.2 percent) (Daily Labor Report, page D-1).  
> 
> A National Research Council panel charged with studying the CPI will
> likely look first at the desirability of moving the CPI fixed-market
> basket of goods and services closer to a cost-of-living index, panelists
> indicate during a March 19 meeting on the scope of the panel's review.
> BLS asked this division of the National Academy of Sciences to look
> especially at the relationship of the agency's CPI to a cost-of-living
> index.  Panel members, who had autonomy to mold their review, discuss with
> BLS officials the desirability of moving the price measure to a cost of
> living gauge.  The group also will likely examine whether BLS should
> produce subindexes for specific groups, such as the elderly.  While the
> review might touch on issues addressed in the Advisory Commission to Study
> the CPI, it will likely have a somewhat different mandate (Daily Labor
> Report, page A-9).
> 
> College students want to work for themselves, and expect to be paid a lot
> of money in their first job, according to a poll taken during spring
> break. Among 50 students visiting Pensacola Beach, Fla., 42 percent said
> in their "dream job" they would want to be their own boss.  The poll was
> conducted by Challenger, Gray & Christmas. More than a quarter (28
> percent) expect their first job to pay more than $40,000.  More than 31
> percent of surveyed females expect to break the $40,000 barrier, while 27
> percent of men plan on earning at least that much (Daily Labor Report,
> page A-7).  
> 
> Productivity gains help keep economy on a roll, says Louis Uchitelle,
> writing in The New York Times (page 1) in an article with a Des Moines
> dateline.  He reports on a work innovation at Maytag, saying that that
> company's experiences, like those of many corporations, help to explain
> the central puzzle of today's economy.  Eight years into the current
> expansion, labor shortages and rising wages should be raising the annual
> inflation rate.  Yet neither is happening.  The annual inflation rate is
> only 1.6 percent, in sharp contrast to the last growth cycle in the
> 1980's, when the rise in the CPI reached 4.6 percent a year.  Nor are
> profits suffering noticeably, despite somewhat slower gains recently.
> Many corporations have come up with numerous ways to dodge the bullet and
> confound the widely held view that inflation is an inevitable result of
> sustained prosperity.  How companies are managing this balancing act is
> abundantly evident here in central Iowa, not only at Maytag, which is at
> Newton, but at two giant companies in Des Moines. Shifting work to lower
> cost cities, a practice that has been popular for decades among
> manufacturers, is now common among service companies, too.  A Princeton
> labor economist says:  "Workers no longer insist on maintaining wage
> scales across a company's various operations, or even see the need to do
> so.  And when that breaks down, so does the pressure on prices that once
> came from across-the-board raises."  The other key means of relieving
> pressure on prices is through the introduction of fancier products and
> services.  Because the government lists these as new items rather than
> higher-priced variations of existing ones, they are not counted as price
> increases in the CPI.  If they were, the annual inflation rate, now 1.6
> percent, would be over 3 percent, a study by government economists found.
> 
> Gasoline prices took their biggest jump in nearly a decade, rising about 8
> 1/2 cents per gallon at the pump over the past 2 weeks, as global changes
> reduced a supply glut, an analyst said yesterday (The Wall Street Journal,
> in an Associated Press article, page C11).
> 
> Today the U.S. jobless rate is 4.4 percent, but some economists see it
> heading below 4 percent soon.  "In 4 or 5 months, we'll have a 3.8 percent
> jobless rate.  It's back to the '60s again," predicts the chief economist
> at the National Association of Realtors.  As forecasts go, this departs
> from the consensus, but it's hardly outrageous.  Economists generally
> believe that whenever the U.S. economy grows beyond 2.5 percent or so, it
> tends to bring down the jobless rate.  What would that mean?  First, more
> troubles for employers already grappling with a tight labor market.
> Bidding for or retaining good people could become increasingly tough
> issues for top management.  On the other hand, this could be more good
> news for job seekers.  Last year, about 385,000 manufacturing jobs
> disappeared in the U.S.  But more than three million new jobs were
> created.  Among the biggest growth areas were software programmers,
> management consultants, amusement park workers, mortgage lenders and
> temporary employees across many fields.  Moreover, despite some pockets of
> high unemployment (New York City and Los Angeles, some towns along the
> Mexican border) 
large portions of the U.S. have already sunk below 4 percent joblessness.
About 55 metropolitan areas are below 3 percent overall.  No less amazing is
the availability of people to take all those jobs.  People keep entering the
labor force.  But the U.S. labor force is growing less than 1 percent
annually.  The decline continues.  By 2013, labor force growth will be zero.
Moreover, there's a bulge of baby boomers, and a shortage of young people.
But some personnel specialists believe the deeper, long-lasting problems re
demographic and structural, and won't just vanish (The Wall Street Journal,
"The Outlook"  by Bernard Wysocki, Jr., page 1).



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