hey, just think,,i probably saved you money...-g-
see,,no problems with labor force...-s-
i think he failed to state that we could just open up the floodgates and let everyone from kosovo, chechnya, and solamia come flip burgers...
Friday January 7, 12:19 pm Eastern Time
Labor official unconcerned by U.S.
earnings figure
WASHINGTON, Jan 7 (Reuters) - A Labor Department official
played down the significance of U.S. average hourly earnings
figures for December released on Friday as part of the
department's employment report.
``If you're looking at our earnings figures, it's not clear that much is going on. You had a 6 cent
increase this month, but for the quarter it was 11 cents. The third quarter was 11 cents, the first two
quarters of the year were 13 cents each,' Bureau of Labor Statistics analyst Tom Nardone told
Reuters Television.
Earlier on Friday, the department reported average hourly earnings rose 0.4 percent in December to
$13.46 from $13.40 in November. The figure caused concern in financial markets, which expect the
Federal Reserve to raise interest rates soon to guard against inflation.
The Labor Department report said the U.S. economy added 315,000 new jobs in December and
the unemployment rate held steady at 4.1 percent, the same as in November.
Asked if the low unemployment rate meant the economy was running out of workers, Nardone
noted that the unemployment rate was measured only among the active work force, which he said
was about 62 percent of the population.
Under the right conditions, some of the remaining 38 percent would come into the work force, he
said. ``It's very hard to say that you're going to run out people,' Nardone said. |
