BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS, DAILY REPORT, THURSDAY, APRIL 4, 2001: New claims for unemployment insurance shot up last week, but the layoffs picture was distorted by federal requirements related to how laid-off workers who exhausted their benefits may seek to get them extended. For the work week ending March 30, new claims for jobless benefits jumped by a seasonally adjusted 64,000 to 460,000, the highest level since the beginning of December, the Labor Department reported today. Many analysts had expected new claims to fall. Because a Federal provision requires workers whose benefits are exhausted to file a new claim so that they can become eligible for an extension of Federal jobless benefits, the weekly claims figures could be volatile in the next few week. The benefit program is part of an economic stimulus package passed by Congress to help workers who lost their jobs amid last year's recession and in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Private economists polled by Reuters had expected claims to fall to 376,000 in the March 30 week. The Labor Department reported claims of 394,000 for the week of March 23. In a sign that people are still struggling to find work, the number of unemployed who had already qualified for a week of benefits rose to 3.608 million in the week ended March 23. This was well above the 2.494 million registered for the same period a year ago. More data on the U.S. jobs market are due out tomorrow, with the release of the March non-farm payrolls report. The unemployment rate is expected to edge up to 5.6 percent from 5.5 percent in February, and outside the farm sector, 41,000 jobs are expected to be created compared with a gain of 66,000 in February (Jeannine Aversa, Associated Press, http://www.nypost.com/apstories/V0456.htm; Nancy Waitz, Reuters, http://www.bayarea.com/mld/bayarea/business/2997408.htm).
Income inequality rose, dropped sharply, and then surged in the last century. In the 80's and 90's, top income groups carried an increasingly large share of the total income in the United States, according to Alan B. Krueger, Berndheim Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University writing in the "Economic Scene" columns of The Wall Street Journal (page C2). Before the 1940's the wealthiest Americans earned the bulk of their income from returns on capital. But capital taxation has had a cumulative effect on top incomes. Today's rich are not so different from the rest of us after all -- they, too, work for a living. But they earn a lot more money. In 2001, the average chief executive of an industrial company with approximately $500 million in sales was paid $1.9 million, according to the Towers Perrin Worldwide Total Remuneration Report. After adjusting for inflation, salaries of chief executives grew almost 6 percent a year in the 1980's and 1990's. Wage growth has been so strong at the high end that the top 1 percent of taxpayers have taken home 84 percent of the growth in total income since 1973. Data compiled by the Bureau of National Affairs through April 1 for all contract settlements show that the average first-year wage increase in newly negotiated contracts is 4.3 percent, compared with 3.9 percent in the comparable period last year. The manufacturing average increase was 2.5 percent, compared with 3.3 percent in 2001, and the median was 2.8 percent, compared with 3 percent. The nonmanufacturing (excluding construction) average increase is 5.2 percent, compared with 4 percent in 2001, and the median was 4 percent, compared with 3.8 percent (Daily Labor Report, page D-1). After accounting for inflation, tuition at 4-year public colleges is up 128 percent since 1980-81, tuition at private 4-year colleges is up 131 percent. After taking into account family incomes and available student financial aid, the affordability of public 4-year colleges varies among states. Most affordable are in Utah, Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas, and Minnesota. Least affordable are in Vermont, Rhode Island, New York, California, and New Hampshire. Source of the data is the College Board (USA Today, page 12A). DUE OUT TOMORROW: The Employment Situation, March 2002.
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