[PEN-L:616] BLS Daily Report

[Richardson_D]

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BLS DAILY REPORT, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 21, 1998:

Today's News Release:  "Usual Weekly Earnings of Wage and Salary
Workers, Third Quarter, 1998" points out that median weekly earnings of
the nation's 97.4 million full-time wage and salary workers were $520 in
the third quarter of 1998.  This was 4.2 percent higher than a year ago,
compared with a gain of 1.6 percent in the CPI-U over the same period.

"Regional and State Employment and Unemployment:  September 1998" was
released late yesterday (October 21, 1998).  lt indicates that regional
and state unemployment rates remained relatively stable in September.
The three regions for which data are available reported little change
from August, and 39 states and the District of Columbia recorded shifts
of 0.3 percentage point or less.  Data for North Carolina and the region
and division in which it is located were not available at the time of
the release.  The national jobless rate was virtually unchanged at 4.6
percent.  Nonfarm payroll employment rose in 34 states and the District
of Columbia.

The unemployment rate remained at a relatively low level throughout the
country in September, with the Midwest again recording the lowest rate
at 3.6 percent, BLS reported (Daily Labor Report, page D-8).  

Major U.S. employers reported that their work forces expanded an average
of 7.7 percent in the year ending June 1998. But they anticipate that
their staffs will grow more slowly, an average of 4.6 percent, through
June 1999, according to the American Management Association's annual
Staffing and Structure Survey released October 20. Of the 1,231 AMA
member organizations that participated in the survey, 45 percent had
plans to increase their workforce by June 1999.
In comparison, in the year ending June 1998, 52 percent of major
employers had increased the size of their workforce. In that same year,
72 percent of responding companies reported creating new jobs, while
only 44 percent project that they will create new jobs in the coming
year (Daily Labor Report, page A-2).  

The U.S. trade deficit leapt to a record high of $16.8 billion in
August, powered by a strong dollar and economic turmoil stretching from
Asia to Latin America, the Commerce Department reports.  A 0.3 percent
dip in exports - down for the fifth straight month - and a 2.2 percent
gain in imports yielded a 15.3 percent jump in the monthly trade gap,
according to seasonally adjusted data (Daily Labor Report, page D-1; The
Washington Post, page C10).

The one sector of the U.S. economy that has clearly turned sour is
manufacturing, says John M. Berry, writing in "Trendlines" of The
Washington Post (page C10).  Production is flat, employment is down by
more than 150,000 since April, and foreign markets are shrinking for the
first time in many years.  Meanwhile, large increases in business
purchases of new plants and equipment - a key feature of the
long-running U.S. economic expansion - have continued to boost
manufacturing capacity even as demand slows.  The consequence is a
significant drop in the share of total production capacity actually in
use.  Last month, that share, known as the capacity utilization rate,
was 79.6 percent, 3.3 percent below the level at the beginning of the
year.


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