More Jobs and Less Inflation

The most winning of all economic combinations is more jobs and less inflation --and that was exactly what the nation achieved in May. The unemployment rate dropped to 7.3% from 7.5% in April; the wholesale price index rose at a moderate annual rate of 3.7%, v. 10% the month before. President Ford hailed the news as "extremely significant" and predicted that it would help him best Ronald Reagan in this week's primaries. Even Democratic Senator William Proxmire of Wisconsin greeted the figures as "unadulterated good news."

Unemployment dropped most sharply among adult women; their jobless rate fell a half-point, to 6.8%. Recovery began in hard-goods industries, where most workers are men; now the industries with largely female work forces are starting to catch up. The number of people who have jobs rose by 300,000 in May to a record 87.7 million; the number of unemployed fell 180,000 to 6.9 million. There are now 3.6 million more people at work, and 1.4 million fewer jobless, than at the bottom of the recession in early 1975.

The wholesale price index stayed about flat in early 1976 before jumping up in April. The May figures indicate that that leap was an aberration. Food prices went up much less in May than in April; industrial commodity prices rose hardly at all. A better guide to the rate at which inflation is subsiding is a comparison over a longer period: during the past twelve months the wholesale price index has risen only a rather modest 5%.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.