> BLS DAILY REPORT, FRIDAY, MAY 12, 2000:
>
> RELEASED TODAY: Producer Price Indexes -- April 2000, indicates that the
> Producer Price Index for Finished Goods declined 0.3 percent in April,
> seasonally adjusted. This decrease followed increases of 1.0 percent in
> February and March. The index for finished goods other than foods and
> energy rose 0.1 percent, the same as a month ago. Prices received by
> producers of intermediate goods fell 0.1 percent, after posting a 0.9
> percent gain in the prior month. The crude goods index turned down 2.5
> percent, following a 1.8 percent advance a month earlier.
>
> Import prices fell 1.6 percent in April, the largest monthly drop since
> December 1992, BLS reports. The decline can after months of rising costs.
> BLS attributed the decline to a 12.7 percent downturn in petroleum
> imports. This marked the largest oil price reduction since a 13.3 percent
> drop in December 1998. "Despite the decreases, imported petroleum prices
> are still 143.9 percent higher than 16 months ago," BLS said (Daily Labor
> Report, page D-6).
>
> Retail sales fell 0.2 percent in April, after a revised 0.5 percent
> advance in March, the Census Bureau reports. Despite the monthly decline,
> sales were up 9.7 percent for the year ended in April. Seasonally
> adjusted data showed that sales fell to $266.0 billion in April, from
> $266.5 billion in March. Some economists said the April decline is not as
> notable as it seems, following months of strong consumer buying, since a
> sharp 2.3 percent drop in the price of gasoline helped cause the retreat.
> Others, however, detected a real slowdown (Daily Labor Report, page D-1).
> __Retail sales took an unexpected 0.2 percent dip last month, as auto
> sales fell for the second month in a row and service stations rang up
> lower sales because of declining gasoline prices, the Commerce Department
> reported yesterday. Cold, wet weather in the eastern part of the country
> also discouraged shopping, but some analysts said the volatile state of
> the stock market and rising interest rates also helped hold down sales "We
> anticipate a 4.5 percent (annual rate of) gain in. real consumer spending
> in the second quarter after an 8.3 percent (rate of) gain in the first
> quarter, said a Merrill Lynch economist (The Washington Post, page E1).
> __Sales at the nation's retailers fell in April for the first time in a
> year and a half as consumers took a breather after 3 months in which they
> spent at the fastest rate in 17 years, government figures showed today.
> Federal Reserve policy makers have expressed concern about the strength of
> consumer demand, and are expected to raise the overnight bank lending rate
> by half a percentage point when they meet on Tuesday (Bloomberg News, The
> New York Times, page C5).
> __The economy showed some signs last month that growth was slowing and
> price pressures were easing. The Commerce Department reported that retail
> sales in April unexpectedly declined 0.2 overall, their first drop since
> August 1998. Excluding the volatile auto sector, sales were flat. That
> was a far weaker performance than analysts had expected. Separately the
> Labor Department reported that prices for imported goods fell 1.6 percent
> in April, the biggest 1-month drop in 7 1/2 years. The reason was oil.
> Excluding fuel, import prices rose 0.1 percent in the month, a
> deceleration from the 0.2 percent increase in March. It isn't certain,
> however, whether the figures are quirks or the beginning of a trend.
> Other data have showed signs of continuing strength, most notably a report
> last week showed a big surge in new job creation in April (The Wall Street
> Journal, page A2).
>
> New unemployment insurance claims filed with state agencies decreased by
> 7,000 to a seasonally adjusted 297,000 for the week ended May 6, the
> Employment and Training Administration announces (Daily Labor Report, page
> D-4).
>
> Despite a booming U.S. economy that continues to generate new jobs for
> workers at all income levels, low-wage employees and their families cannot
> afford basic necessities, an Economic Policy Institute study concludes.
> The report was written by three EPI analysts: labor economist Jared
> Bernstein, policy analyst Chauna Brocht, and research associate Maggie
> Spade-Aguilar. It looked at 19 basic family budgets in various U.S.
> cities as an alternative to using the federal government's poverty
> threshold to determine if incomes are covering necessities. Expenditure
> tallies include food, housing, child care, transportation, health care,
> taxes, and other necessities "for a working family to maintain a safe and
> decent standard of living," the EPI said. The EPI authors used expenditure
> patterns described in the BLS consumer expenditure survey which is one of
> the core data series used to construct the CPI. Data from this survey
> showed that low-income families typically spend less on necessities than
> is recommended by "basic family budgets, suggesting that such families are
> not fully meeting their basic needs," the report said. EPI is a liberal
> nonprofit economic think tank founded in 1986 (Daily Labor Report, page
> A-10).
>
> With the U.S. economy continuing to boom despite five Federal Reserve
> increases in a key interest rate, many financial analysts recently have
> increased their estimates of how high rates eventually will have to go to
> slow the economy's headlong rush (The Washington Post, page E1).
>
> OPEC's recent increase in its oil-output quotas may be too small to meet
> rising demand later this year, the International Energy Agency said,
> indicating that prices could rise from levels now at a 7-week high (The
> Washington Post, page E3).
>
> Women's stagnant enrollment in MBA programs will persist unless business
> schools and businesses become female-friendlier places and start wooing
> women at much younger ages. So concludes a groundbreaking study set for
> release today, based upon a poll of 1,684 male and female MBA graduates of
> 12 leading U.S. business schools between 1981 and 1995. The study seems
> sure to spark more joint efforts between those schools and the 13 big
> companies that sponsored the research (The Wall Street Journal, page B2).
>
> Home buyers get ready for some bad news. Mortgage rates just jumped to
> their highest level in 5 years, and they could be headed even higher. The
> average rate of a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage climbed to 8.5 percent this
> week, up from 8.25 percent last week, according to a weekly survey
> released yesterday by Freddie-Mac, the mortgage service (The Wall Street
> Journal's "Credit Markets" feature, page C16).
>
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