BLS DAILY REPORT, THURSDAY, AUGUST 11, 1996 RELEASED TODAY: The Producer Price Index for Finished Goods advanced 0.5 percent in March, seasonally adjusted. This followed a 0.2 percent decline in February and a rise of 0.3 percent in January. Prices received by domestic producers of intermediate goods moved up 0.2 percent in March, after falling 0.4 percent in the previous month. The Crude Goods Price Index increased l.6 percent after declining 0.7 percent in February .... _____Mirroring a slowdown in the economy at the end of 1995, nonfarm productivity fell by a 1 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter, but, for the entire year, productivity rose 1.1 percent, BLS reports ....(Daily Labor Report, page D-1). By reducing absenteeism and boosting morale, firms that provide child care services save money and help workers become more productive, finds a Conference Board study (Daily Labor Report, page A-11). The study, based on the board's monthly survey of its Work-Family Research and Advisory Panel, found that employee absences from work because of child care problems cost firms $3 billion a year. The advisory panel is composed of work-family experts from leading companies in the United States, Australia, Canada, and Europe .... Wage data compiled by BNA for the first 14 weeks of 1996 show that the median first-year wage increase in newly negotiated collective bargaining agreements in all industries equals 3 percent an hour. Comparable figures for the same period last year were the same, 3 percent ....(Daily Labor Report, pages 2,D-10). For the third year in a row, absenteeism averaged just 1.7 percent of scheduled workdays in 1995, about equal to the years before the 1990-91 recession, says the Bureau of National Affairs, Inc., Washington (Wall Street Journal, "Business Bulletin," page A1). USA Today lists the top 10 and bottom 10 jobs for the Class of '96 (page 1D). The newspaper quotes P.O.V. magazine's annual look at the 10 best career fields to get into, and the 10 career fields to dump ....The magazine determined the positions after analyzing Department of Labor statistics and interviewing trend forecaster, head hunters, experts, and general economists ....Accounting, bank teller, government bureaucrat, telephone operator, factory worker, real estate agent, bartender, college professor, librarian, and middle manager are the bottom 10 careers. The 10 to aim for are computer animation, on-line content producer, mutual fund manager, industrial environmentalist, family doctor, managerial consultant, intellectual property lawyer, priest, rabbi, or minister, interactive ad executive, and physical therapist. Outsourcing saves money, but labor is frustrated, points out an article in the New York Times (page D1) ....Across America, executives at big companies like GM are looking at their less efficient operations with dismay and trying to find ways to buy more parts from low-cost outside vendors ....But for many workers, this is a frightening prospect ....The article is illustrated with a graph that shows the percentage of manufacturing workers who were union members, 1985 to 1995, attributed to BLS.
