BLS DAILY REPORT, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 30, 1996 RELEASED TODAY: Unemployment rates for most states showed little movement in September, as 44 states recorded shifts of 0.3 percentage point or less. The national jobless rate was essentially unchanged at 5.2 percent. Nonfarm payroll employment increased in 32 states over the month .... _____Fears among some analysts that wage inflation was about to increase subsided with the release of the employment cost index. Data from BLS showed compensation costs for civilian workers advancing a modest 0.6 percent, seasonally adjusted, in the third quarter of 1996. In the year ended in September, compensation costs rose 2.8 percent, a shade more than the 2.7 percent advance in the year ended in September 1995 ....(Daily Labor Report, pages 2,D-1). _____The stock and bond markets staged strong rallies yesterday, after the Labor Department reported that employers' labor costs rose slowly in the July-September period, a sign that inflation is likely to remain low ....(Washington Post, page C12). _____Despite the strongest labor market in at least seven years, the growth of American workers' wages and benefits slowed in the third quarter. The slowdown partly undercut earlier indications that workers were beginning to enjoy increases in pay that outpaced the rise in the cost of living ....(New York Times, page D1). _____Bond prices surged to six-month highs following the release of data signaling the economy is growing much slower than previously thought. The ECI rose just 0.6 percent in the third quarter. The strength in the bond market helped send the Dow Jones industrial higher ....Despite low unemployment and growing evidence of worker shortages, inflationary pressures from the labor market are receding ....(Wall Street Journal, pages A2,C1,C2,C23). A survey by the National Association of Business Economists says the pace of business activity moderated significantly during the third quarter, and continued slower growth will mean a more moderate pace of job creation into 1997 ....(Daily Labor Report, page A-2; Wall Street Journal, page C23). Consumer confidence dipped in October as both perceptions about current business conditions and expectations about the future declined, the Conference Board says ....(Daily Labor Report, page A-7; Washington Post, page C16; New York Times, page D18; Wall Street Journal, page A2). U.S. workers are expected to earn about 4 percent in merit pay raises next year -- the same percentage they have received over the past four years -- but the number of workers getting lump sum bonuses in lieu of salary increases has grown markedly, according to a Towers Perrin survey ....(Daily Labor Report, page A-6). "In the Loop" (Washington Post) says that Jack E. Triplett, chief economist at the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis since 1985, has moved to Brookings to do health care research.
