>BLS DAILY REPORT, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 16, 1996
RELEASED TODAY:
CPI -- On a seasonally adjusted basis, the CPI-U rose 0.3 percent
in September, following a 0.1 percent increase in August. The food
index rose 0.5 percent in September, again reflecting sharp increases in
the indexes for meats, poultry, fish, and eggs and for dairy products.
The energy index, which declined 3.2 percent in the 3-month period ended
in August after advancing 9.4 percent in the prior 6-month period, was
unchanged in September ....Excluding food and energy, the CPI rose 0.3
percent, following a 0.1 percent increase in August. About two-thirds
of the acceleration in this index from August to September was due to a
sharp turnaround in the index for apparel and upkeep -- up 0.5 percent
after declining 1.4 percent in August. Increases in the indexes for
airline fares and for new vehicles also contributed to the larger
>advance in September ....
> REAL EARNINGS -- Real average weekly earnings increased by 0.8
percent from August to September after seasonal adjustment. This
>increase was due to a 0.6 percent increase in average weekly hours and
>a 0.5 percent increase in average weekly earnings. These gains were
partially offset by a 0.3 percent increase in the CPI-W ....Over the
>year, real average weekly earnings grew by 1.4 percent ....
>
U.S. to revise its estimate of layoffs, says a New York Times article
>(page D5). Acknowledging a flaw in a key statistic in the debate over
economic insecurity, the Labor Department said today that it would
>revise upward its tabulation of the number of layoffs in the mid-1990'
>after an academic researcher found a problem with the government's
>figures. BLS estimated in August that 8.4 million people had left
>their jobs involuntarily from 1993 through 1995, 7 percent less than
>the 9 million people found to have been permanently laid off in the
>bureau's previous analysis covering 1991 through 1993 ....Henry Farber,
>a labor economist at Princeton University, discovered that the
>proportion of people who did not respond to the most recent survey was
>far higher, at about 9 percent, than for the previous survey, which had
a nonresponse rate of about 1.8 percent. Farber informed BLS, which
>agreed that it had made a mistake. To make the two most recent surveys
>comparable, BLS said it would adjust the layoff figures for both of
>them. Thomas Nardone, a supervising economist at BLS, said that the
>new figures were still being calculated, but that the revised layoff
>figure for the most recent survey would be higher. Farber said that
>the new numbers should show that layoffs in the most recent period were
>equal to or even slightly higher than during the previous period.
>Nardone said BLS had considered whether it needed to adjust for
>nonrespondents but decided not to do so in the mistaken belief that the
>percentage of nonrespondents had been the same in both surveys ....The
>recalculation, which Nardone said should be complete before Election
>Day, would seem to weaken the Clinton Administration's argument that
the worst of the job losses are over, says the Times. And it could give
more ammunition to the challenger, Bob Dole, who has built his campaign
around the argument that an underperforming economy is shortchanging
>most people ....
>
Cities and surrounding metropolitan areas are more economically linked
than ever, a HUD study said ....It suggests that in many metropolitan
areas, cities provide potential workers for regional high-tech computer
and data processing industries. Labor Department statistics show that
90 percent of the new jobs created in the past several years have come
in and around cities ....(Washington Post, page A19).
