BLS Daily Report

[Richardson_D <Richardson_D@xxxxxxx>]

> DAILY REPORT, THURSDAY, JANUARY 10, 2002:
>
> RELEASED TODAY:  The U.S. Import Price Index decreased 0.9 percent in
> December, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports.  The decline followed
> drops of 1.4 percent and 2.3 percent in November and October,
> respectively.  The Export Price Index also fell for the third consecutive
> month, down 0.2 percent in December.
>
> The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits
> dropped during the first week of the new year, the government reports
> today.  The news suggested that the huge wave of layoffs triggered by the
> recession and the terrorist attacks may finally be abating. The Labor
> Department reports that new claims for unemployment fell by 58,000 last
> week to 395,000, the lowest level in 3 weeks.  This improvement, which
> came after 2 weeks of big increases, was about 4 times the 14,000 decline
> that many private economists had been forecasting.  Analysts said it could
> be a further sign that the labor market is stabilizing after the huge
> layoffs in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks.  On Friday the
> government reported that unemployment in December hit a 6-year high of 5.8
> percent.  However, the 124,000 jobs cut from business payrolls during
> December was sharply down from the 2 previous months when 800,000
> Americans lost their jobs as travel-related businesses laid off thousands.
> A second report today shows that prices of imported goods remained well
> contained, falling by 0.9 percent in December, the seventh consecutive
> month that import prices have not increased.  For the whole year, the
> Labor Department says, import prices were down by a record 8.9 percent,
> compared to an increase of 3.3 percent in 2000.  The improvement reflected
> a big turnaround in petroleum prices, which had risen by 17.5 percent in
> 2000 but fell by 8.5 percent last year (Martin Crutsinger, Associated
> Press, http://nandotimes.com/business/story/215576p-2080668c.html).
>
> The recession has been tough for everyone, but for many blacks and
> Hispanics, the economic pain has been even sharper, writes Deborah Kong,
> Associated Press
> http://www.nandotimes.com/business/story/214661p-2073497c.html).  Experts
> say that's because those two groups tend to be the last hired and the
> first fired.  Blacks and Hispanics have also been particularly vulnerable
> to the recession because many work in manufacturing, air transportation,
> hotels and temporary employment services -- industries that have been
> among the hardest hit by the downturn, some minority advocates say.  The
> recession's blow to minorities was highlighted in the latest national
> unemployment report, released Friday.  For Hispanics, the jobless rate for
> December was 7.9 percent, the highest it's been since July 1997.  The
> jobless rate for blacks was 10.3 percent -- twice that of whites. "This is
> a tough time for minorities primarily because they tend to be lower
> skilled than the average person in the work force," says Chris Thornberg,
> a senior economist at the University of California, Los Angeles.
>
> Writing in the feature "Politics & People" (The Wall Street Journal, page
> A13), Albert R. Hunt says that blacks make only 70 percent as much as
> whites, almost seven in 10 African American babies are born to a single
> mother; and minorities are twice as likely to be without health insurance.
> The black unemployment rate last month was over 10 percent, double that of
> whites, and one-third of African American teenagers looking for work are
> jobless.
>
> U.S. wholesalers pared back their inventories for the sixth straight month
> in November, as sales remained unchanged, the Department of Commerce said
> today.  It reported that stocks of unsold goods on wholesalers' shelves
> fell 1.1 percent.  This compared with October's revised drop of 1.2
> percent.  November's drop in inventories was larger than expected.
> Economists in a Reuters poll forecast, on average, that inventories fell
> 0.5 percent.  The stocks-to-sales ratio, which measures how long it would
> take to deplete current inventories, fell in November to 1.30 months'
> worth from 1.31 months in October (Reuters,
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25049-2002Jan10.html).
>
> Last minute shoppers helped rescue many retailers from a disastrous
> holiday sales performance, but the gains were the result of heavy
> discounting that's expected to damage fourth-quarter profits.  The
> value-oriented chains, particularly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., continued to be
> the big winners.  And while department and apparel specialty stores like
> Federated Stores, Inc., Limited, Inc., and Gap, Inc. continued to
> struggle, their sales declines were not as steep as analysts expected
> (Anne D'Innocenzio, Associated Press,
> http://www.nandotimes.com/business/story/215669p-2081875c.html).
>
> Data on wage bargaining in 2002 compiled by BNA in the first weeks of the
> new year show that the average negotiated first-year wage increase in all
> new contracts was 3.8 percent, compared with 3.6 percent in the comparable
> period a year ago (Daily Labor Report, page D-1).
>
> DUE OUT TOMORROW:  Producer Price Indexes, December 2001
>

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