> BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS, DAILY REPORT, OCTOBER 18, 2001:
>
> RELEASED TODAY: Of the 315 largest counties in the United States, 138 had
> rates of employment growth above the national average of 2.3 percent in
> 2000, and 23 experienced declines in employment, according to preliminary
> data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Average annual pay
> in 2000 was higher than the national average of $35,296 in 105 of the
> largest 315 U.S. counties. Extraordinary growth in average annual pay was
> experienced in the San Francisco Bay area, where three of the four
> counties with the highest rates of pay growth were located.
>
> The number of workers filing new claims for unemployment benefits climbed
> last week as the fallout from the ailing economy and the terror attacks
> continued to inflict damage on the labor market. For the work week ending
> October 13, new jobless claims increased by a seasonally adjusted 6,000 to
> 490,000, the Labor Department reported today. The advance came after a
> big drop in claims of 51,000. But in the prior 2 weeks, claims had posted
> sharp increases, pushing them to a 9-year high as layoffs mounted in the
> travel and tourism industries, which were hard hit by the September 11
> attacks. The more stable 4-week moving average jumped to 491,250 last
> week, the highest level since April 6, 1991, when the country was emerging
> out of the last recession (Jeannine Aversa, Associated Press,
> http://www.nypost.com/apstories/business/V7431.htm).
>
> A year-long study of the sources of U.S. productivity gains during the
> last half of the 1990s provides encouraging projections for continued
> increases once the economy pulls out of its presumed recession, although
> productivity increases are likely to be smaller than in the economy's boom
> times, according to a report released Oct. 16 by the international
> consulting firm McKinsey & Co. The latest government figures show that
> productivity gains already had moderated as of the second quarter of 2001,
> reflecting what was then a significant economic slowdown. Acknowledging
> the uncertainty created by the September 11 terrorist attacks, the
> McKinsey Global Institute said "While we cannot predict how consumer and
> business demand will unfold, many of the product, service, and process
> innovations underlying the U.S. productivity improvement that began in
> 1995 will continue to generate productive growth above the long-term
> 1972-95 trend. However, the growth rate will probably not be as high as
> the 1995-2000 rate" (Daily Labor Report, page A9).
>
> Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve chairman, said today that the damage
> to the economy from terrorist attacks should be temporary and that the
> United States would soon start benefiting from the advances of technology
> that helped fuel the boom of the late 1990's. In an appearance before the
> Joint Economic Committee of Congress, Greenspan described the short-term
> economic outlook as murky (The New York Times, page C1).
>
> The terrorists have set us back for a few quarters, Federal Reserve
> chairman Alan Greenspan told Congress, but longer-term prospects for
> faster productivity growth are "scarcely diminished," according to the
> "Capital" feature of The Wall Street Journal (page A1). The article is
> illustrated with a graph that shows the annual growth of non-farm output
> per hour of work, 1947-73; 1973-95; and 1995-00, and gives the source of
> the data as the Bureau of Labor Statistics. On page A2 of the Journal,
> Greenspan is said to be optimistic about the potential for information
> technology to keep the U.S. economy growing faster than it did from the
> mid-1970s through the mid 1990s.
>
> More women are staying home with their infant children and not holding
> jobs in the workforce, according to a study released today by the Census
> Bureau. For the first time in 25 years, the labor force participation
> rate of mothers with infant children decreased, falling to 55 percent in
> 2000 from a record high of 59 percent in 1998, the study found. The
> percentage of mothers in the workforce remained higher than when the
> government first recorded it in 1976, when it was 31 percent. Each year
> through 1998, the labor force participation rate for women with infants
> either increased or did not change significantly, the survey showed.
> "Changes in the labor force participation of women with infants are
> important as they could signal changes in the demand for child care
> arrangements, changes in child rearing and further childbearing and
> spacing patterns, and the demand for employer-sponsored maternity
> benefits," the study said. The survey was conducted in June 2000, with
> 50,000 participants (Daily Labor Report, page A-3).
>
> Accompanying an article in The Washington Post (page A2) on the fall of
> the percentage of new mothers in the workplace is a graph that gives the
> percentage of working mothers by age, race and ethnicity, martial status,
> and educational attainment working in 1998 and 2000. Source of the data
> is given as the Current Population Survey.
>
> The September employment report gave few reasons for optimism. Even
> though most of the data does not reflect the effects of the September 11
> attacks, the report still showed a 199,000 job decline, the largest in
> more than 10 years. Yet some industries were still adding workers. In
> particular, the health care sector outside of government-run hospitals,
> grew by 29,000 jobs in September, equal to its average growth over the
> previous 3 months. In fact, over the last year, health care has generated
> 283,000 jobs, making it the second biggest source of new jobs. The only
> industry with a bigger gain over that period was education, which added
> 338,000 workers. Indeed, employment outside of health and education
> shrank by more than 500,000 jobs over the last year. Thus, even before
> the attacks, U.S. growth was being driven by health and education. And
> that may persist, even after the U.S. recovers from this downturn
> (Business Week, October 22, page 30).
>
> Consumer prices for goods and services probably rose 0.2 percent in
> September, after posting a 0.1 percent gain in August. Core prices,
> excluding the most volatile food and energy components, are projected to
> rise by a similar 0.2 percent, after rising 0.2 percent in August
> (Business Week, October 22, page 144).
>
> Data compiled by the Bureau of National Affairs in the first 42 weeks of
> 2001 show that the weighted average first-year wage increase in newly
> negotiated contracts in the manufacturing industry was 3.1 percent,
> compared with 3.2 percent in the same period of 2000. Nonmanufacturing
> contracts, excluding construction agreements, showed a weighted average
> gain of 3.9 percent, compared with 4 percent in 2000, and a median of 3.8
> percent, compared with 3.5 percent a year ago (Daily Labor Report, page
> D-1).
>
> DUE OUT TOMORROW: Consumer Price Index -- September 2001
> Real Earnings: September 2001
>
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