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BLS DAILY REPORT, FRIDAY, APRIL 17, 1998:
RELEASED TODAY: Regional and state unemployment rates were generally
stable in March. All four regions reported little change from February,
and 40 states and the District of Columbia recorded shifts of 0.3
percentage point or less. The national jobless rate was essentially
unchanged at 4.7 percent. Nonfarm payroll employment increased in 32
states and the District of Columbia ....
__BLS announces it will partially switch to a geometric mean method of
calculating the CPI beginning with January 1999 data. This change is
expected to shave 0.2 percentage point annually from the inflation
barometer. BLS plans to switch to a geometric mean calculation method
for 61 percent of the expenditure weights in the CPI-U and 64 percent of
the weights for the CPI-W. The agency will continue to use the current
arithmetic mean method of calculating the remaining index categories.
Changing many items to a geometric mean index will improve the pricing
measure and allow it to approximate more closely a true cost-of-living
gauge, says BLS Commissioner Abraham. Moving to a geometric mean index
will partially offset the CPI's substitution bias ....(Daniel J. Roy,
Daily Labor Report, page AA-1; Text E-1, E-4).
__The government's main inflation gauge will be changed to account for
the fact that consumers respond to the rising prices of many items by
shifting to lower-cost substitutes, BLS announced yesterday. The
announcement marked the end of a series of changes in the CPI that were
begun in 1995 to correct for the CPI's tendency to overstate the actual
rise in the cost of living. The changes affect the vast majority of
Americans and the budgets of governments at all levels because the CPI
is used to determine cost-of-living adjustments in benefits, such as
Social Security, and for adjusting features of the income tax, such as
standard deductions and tax brackets. When the change announced
yesterday is incorporated into the CPI next January, the cumulative
effect of all the revisions will be to trim the annual increase in the
index by about eight-tenths of a percentage point ....(John M. Berry,
Washington Post, page A1).
__The government is making changes in its chief inflation index to
better reflect how Americans shop - cutting back when something costs
too much, switching from name brands, buying at outlets instead of
department stores. The switch, which will start with the price report
for January, should shave about 0.2 percentage point off the CPI, which
last year hit an 11-year low of 1.7 percent ....(AP story: New York
Times, page A18).
__The Labor Department said it will adopt a new formula for calculating
the CPI that it expected to reduce its annual rate of growth by
two-tenths of a percentage point ....Katharine Abraham, commissioner of
BLS, said the decision to use the new formula was based on a great deal
of research that she said backed up the view that consumers are price
sensitive ....(Reuters story).
New claims filed with state agencies for unemployment insurance benefits
fell 22,000 to a seasonally adjusted 289,000 for the week ended April
11, the Labor Department's Employment and Training Administration
reports. ETA said the last time the number of initial claims was this
low was the week ended July 28, 1997. The drop in weekly claims was the
largest since Jan. 24, 1998, when claims dropped 25,000 ....(Daily Labor
Report, page D-1; Washington Post, page F2)_____The number might have
been held down by the Good Friday and Passover holidays, which could
have prevented some discharged workers from seeking benefits, analysts
said ....(New York Times, page C9; Wall Street Journal, page A2).
Construction of new homes and apartments dropped 2.8 percent and
building permits fell 2.5 percent in March after soaring a month
earlier, according to the Department of Commerce ....(Daily Labor
Report, page D3; Washington Post, page F2; New York Times, page C9; Wall
Street Journal, page A2).
Manufacturers in the Mid-Atlantic region reported a steady pace of
business activity in April, although employment measures declined during
the month, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia says ....(Daily
Labor Report, page A-6). A chart shows the percentage of companies, by
industry, who downsized their work forces three or more times in the
past three years: fifty-one percent of firms in insurance, 46 percent in
technology, 34 percent in manufacturing, and 25 percent in health care.
The source is BNA (Washington Post, page F2).
DUE OUT MONDAY: Usual Weekly Earnings of Wage and Salary Workers: First
Quarter 1998
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