BLS DAILY REPORT, FRIDAY, JUNE 11, 1999
RELEASED TODAY: The Producer Price Index for Finished Goods increased 0.2
percent in May, seasonally adjusted. This rise followed a 0.5 percent
advance in April and a 0.2 percent increase in March. The index for
finished goods other than foods and energy edged up 0.1 percent, the same as
a month earlier. Prices received by producers of intermediate goods
advanced 0.2 percent, after increasing 0.6 percent in the previous month.
The crude goods index rose 5.5 percent, following a 1.3 percent rise in
April. ...
Disasters that killed hundreds of workers in the early part of the century
led to changes that have lowered the death rate from job accidents by 90
percent since 1913, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in
Atlanta say. Work-related deaths have declined to 4 per 100,000 workers in
1997 from 61 per 100,000 in 1913, federal agencies said. An estimated
23,000 people died from work injuries in 1913, compared with 5,100 in 1997,
according to data from the National Safety Council and BLS. In that period,
the work force grew to about 130 million from 38 million. The decline has
been particularly pronounced in high-risk industries like mining, where the
average death rate was 25 per 100,000 in 1996-97 compared with 329 per
100,000 from 1911 to 1915, the agency said. ... Today, industries with the
highest average rates for fatal accidents include mining,
agriculture-forestry-fishing, and construction. The leading causes of
workplace deaths involve motor vehicles, homicides, and machine-related
injuries (AP story in New York Times, page A24).
__Climbing petroleum prices pushed the cost of goods imported into the
United States up in May for the third consecutive month. The import price
index increased 0.7 percent in May, after jumping 1.0 percent in April, its
largest gain in nearly 3 years. The 44.2 percent leap in petroleum prices
from February to May accounted for most of the increase, according to the
BLS report. Overall, import prices were down 1.0 percent during the past 12
months. ... (Daily Labor Report, page D-1).
__Prices for imported goods rose for the third straight month in May, the
longest streak in nearly 3 years. The trend, spurred by higher prices both
for oil and manufactured goods, is yet another inflation warning flag waving
over the U.S. economy. Falling import prices, pushed down by the Asian
crisis, had been a major reason why American prices have been so tame over
the past 2 year, despite rapid growth and low unemployment. ... (Alejandro
Bodipo-Memba in Wall Street Journal, page A2).
Initial claims for unemployment insurance benefits filed with state agencies
rose by 14,000 to a seasonally adjusted level of 323,000 during the week
ended June 5, the Employment and Training Administration announces. ...
(Daily Labor Report, page D-3)_____Jobless claims rose last week to the
highest level since early January, but economists shrugged it off as a
temporary blip in a job market that remains exceptionally healthy. ...
(Washington Post, page E4)_____The number of first time applications for
state unemployment benefits rose for the third consecutive week, jumping
14,000 in the Memorial Day holiday-shortened week. ... (New York Times,
page C19).
The Japanese economy, which had been mired in recession, grew an astonishing
1.9 percent in the first 3 months of this year, largely because of massive
public works spending, the government announced. The quarter-on-quarter
growth translated into an annualized rate of 7.9 percent, stunning
economists and sending stock prices soaring in Japan. ... (Washington Post,
page E1)_____After nearly 2 years of recession, Japan's dormant economy
leaped to life in the first 3 months of the year, according to official
figures so strong that they were played down by some of the government's own
economists. ... (New York Times, page C1).
Women in the European Union on average receive 28 percent less in salary
than men, in part because women hold fewer management level jobs, according
to a report released by the European Commission's statistical agency,
Eurostat. ... (Daily Labor Report, page A-3).
With a proposed increase in the minimum wage likely to return soon as a key
issue before Congress, lawmakers are being urged to look at the issue from a
new angle: how lessons learned from welfare reform can be applied to the
way minimum wage rates are set. Researchers and business leaders discuss
new approached during a symposium sponsored by the Employment Policies
Institute. ... Instead of raising the federal minimum wage, it might be
time to make the federal minimum wage a floor and allow the states to decide
if and by how much to raise it, suggested the head of the EPI and the top
executive of a major restaurant chain. ... (Daily Labor Report, page A-13).
The number of union elections, the union win rate, and the number of
eligible voters in elections won by unions all continued to climb in 1998,
according to preliminary findings based on National Labor Relations Board
data analyzed by BNA PLUS, BNA's research division. Also, for the first
time, unions won 50 percent of the elections in which they participated in
units of 500 or more workers. ... (Daily Labor Report, page C-1).
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