Full text of U.S. Financial Data : August 10, 2000

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August 10, 2000

USFinancialData
THE WEEK’S HIGHLIGHTS:
■ The unemployment rate remained steady at 4 percent in July, while
total nonfarm payroll employment registered a decline of 108,000 jobs.
The employment decline reflected the loss of 290,000 temporary jobs
at the Census Bureau as work on the 2000 census winds down.
Excluding those losses, private-sector employment increased 138,000.
Average hourly earnings rose 0.4 percent in July, compared to 0.3
percent in June. Since July of 1999, earnings have risen 3.7 percent.
■ Non-farm productivity rose at a 5.3 percent annual rate in the second
quarter, up from 1.9 percent in the first quarter. Over the past year,
productivity has risen 5.1 percent, the largest four-quarter increase
since the third quarter of 1983. The second-quarter productivity
report also showed that unit labor costs declined at an annual rate
of 0.1 percent. Year-over-year, labor costs have declined 0.4 percent,
the first such decline since the first quarter of 1984.
■ Consumer credit increased at a 9.9 percent annual rate in June,
slowing slightly from the (revised) 11.8 percent pace of a month earlier.
■ Inventories of merchant wholesalers rose 1.0 percent in June, the
17th consecutive monthly increase. The inventory/sales ratio for
June was unchanged at 1.29.
■ Import prices were unchanged in July, with prices of imported
petroleum products falling 2.4 percent and non-petroleum import
prices rising 0.3 percent. Prices of U.S. exports were also
unchanged in July.
All data are seasonally adjusted unless otherwise indicated.
U.S. Financial Data is published weekly by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of
St. Louis. For more information on data, please call (314) 444-8590. To be added to the mailing
list, please call (314) 444-8808 or (314) 444-8809.
Information in this publication is also included in the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) electronic
bulletin board at (314) 621-1824 or internet World Wide Web server at www.stls.frb.org/fred.