BLS DAILY REPORT, THURSDAY, APRIL 15, 1999
RELEASED TODAY: Median weekly earnings of the nation's 95.6 million full-time wage and salary workers were $538 in the first quarter of 1999. This was 3.3 percent higher than a year earlier, compared with a gain of 1.7 percent in the CPI-U over the same period. ...
BLS economist Marilyn Manser told an advisory group that expanding the current establishment survey to include all employee earnings is a feasible plan the agency might consider somewhere down the road. But Jack Galvin, BLS associate commissioner for employment statistics, told the agency's business research advisory council that BLS currently has no plans to change the CES in this way. First, the agency will concentrate on already approved changes to the CES, he said. "This is purely research now," Galvin said, referring to a pilot study to include more employee earnings in the CES. ... BLS is continuing to refine its future job opening and labor turnover survey, including limiting the sampling to 16,000 establishments and defining what constitutes a job opening, said BLS economist Rick Clayton. BLS has scheduled the first release of the data for late fiscal year 2001. ... (Daniel J. Roy in Daily Labor Report, page A-10).
BLS reports 1,660 mass layoff actions in the fourth quarter of 1998, involving 342,010 workers. Although the number of layoff events was virtually unchanged from 1997's fourth quarter, the number of workers affected was larger and the proportion of events with expectations of worker recall was lower in the final quarter of 1998. In 1998, mass layoff events totaled 5,759 and worker separations totaled 1.2 million, slightly higher than in 1997, when BLS recorded 5,645 mass layoff events involving 1.1 million employees. ... (Daily Report, page D-1).
Business inventories rose 0.4 percent in February after holding flat in January, the Commerce Department reports, while sales rose 0.9 percent. The rise in inventories was somewhat stronger than analysts were expecting. ... (Daily Labor Report, page A-8)____Too big a buildup in inventories in relation to sales can signal production cutbacks as businesses work to reduce the backlog of unsold goods. But the current inventories level is lean. Businesses had enough goods on shelves and back lots during both February and January to meet demand for 1.37 months. ... (New York Times, page C8)_____While overall business inventories rose in February, robust consumer appetites for all types of products helped allay fears that an inventory buildup would be a drag on economic growth. ... (Wall Street Journal, page A2).
DUE OUT TOMORROW: Regional and State Employment and Unemployment: March 1999