> BLS DAILY REPORT, WEDNESDAY, MAY 12, 1999:
>
> Today's News Release: "U.S. Import and Export Price Indexes -- April
> 1999" indicates that the U.S. Import Price Index rose 0.8 percent in
> April. The increase was attributed to the upswing in imported petroleum
> prices and followed a 0.1 percent rise in March. The price index for U.S.
> exports also rose in April, increasing 0.2 percent after decreasing in
> each of the prior 2 months.
>
> Labor productivity, the basic source of improving standards of living in
> the United States, is rising strongly as American workers collectively
> produce even more goods and services while working relatively few
> additional hours to do so. For instance, in the first 3 months of the
> year, productivity -- technically output per hour worked -- at nonfarm
> businesses rose at a rapid 4 percent annual rate. That allowed production
> to rise at a 5 percent rate while hours worked went up less than 1 percent
> (John M. Berry, in The Washington Post (page E1).
> __The productivity of the nation's workers surged in the first 3 months of
> this year, highlighting the economy's continued competitiveness in its
> ninth year of expansion and easing fears of inflation (The New York Times,
> in a Reuters dispatch, page C2).
> __The productivity of American workers outside of agriculture surged at a
> 4 percent annual pace in the first quarter, compared with the fourth
> quarter, adding more evidence to the case that productivity is perking up
> after a 25-year snooze. Growth in productivity, or output per hour of
> work, is "just about the single most important measurement of economic
> prosperity and how the economy performs," said a Columbia Business School
> economist (The Wall Street Journal, page A2. The Journal's page 1 graph is
> of nonfarm productivity, 1994 to the present).
>
> The National Coalition on Health Care, a bipartisan group headed by former
> presidents Bush, Carter, and Ford has put out its latest report "The
> Erosion of Health Insurance Coverage in the United States", David S.
> Broder writes in The Washington Post (page A27). In 1992, when the plight
> of the uninsured became a major issue in the presidential campaign, there
> were 38 million non-covered Americans below Medicare age. Five years
> later, the number had growth by 5 million. And the rate of increase is
> accelerating from an average of half a million annually in the first 2
> years to an average of 1.2 million annually in the 3 most recent years.
> The report's authors, Steven Findlay and Joel Miller -- who had the
> assistance of Tulane University's Kenneth Thorpe, probably the country's
> leading authority on this question -- say the legions of the uninsured are
> rising because of fundamental economic and demographic forces, which, by
> themselves, are certain to make the problem worse. The authors say that
> "even if the rosy economic conditions prevalent since 1992 prevail for
> another decade, a projected 52 million to 54 million non-elderly Americans
> -- one in five -- will be uninsured in 2009." If a recession occurs, that
> number will jump to 61 million -- one in four. Most of the uninsured have
> jobs, but increasingly they work in small businesses or in service sectors
> that either do not cover employees or require them to pay so much for
> health insurance that they cannot afford it. the growing numbers of
> self-employed, part-timers and contract workers swell the totals. It is a
> double whammy. Between 1996 and 1998, the percentage of small firms (with
> fewer than 200 employees) offering health insurance dropped from 59
> percent to 54 percent. On average, their employees were required to pay
> almost half (44 percent) of the policy premiums for themselves and their
> families. Faced with those costs, more workers are declining health
> insurance.
>
>
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