FINAL EDITION OF CAPITAL SPENDING SURVEY

HELP-WANTED ADVERTISING SLIPS

WEEKLY JOBLESS CLAIMS MAINTAIN UPWARD TREND

Today the Commerce Department's Bureau of the Census announced that U.S. businesses plan to invest about $603 billion for capital goods in 1996. This is an increase of 1.5 (+/- 0.8) percent from 1995. Business investment represents domestic expenditures for depreciable capital assets such as buildings and other structures, and machinery and other equipment. This year's estimated increase is small compared with recent yearly increases. The 1994-to-1995 increase was 8.1 percent and, from 1993 to 1994, capital investment increased by 12.3 percent.

The spending data for 1995 and 1996 are based on information collected in the semiannual Investment Plans Survey (IPS). The survey is conducted using a random sample of 30,000 nonfarm companies with five or more paid employees.

Today's report will be the last of its kind. Due to budget reductions, the Investment Plans Survey has been eliminated.

The Conference Board reported today that its index of help-wanted advertising slid from 88 to 85 to 82 between January and March. The monthly index is derived from surveys of employment want ads appearing in 51 major newspapers. The board identifies advertising changes for nine distinct geographical regions. Over the past three months, want ads declined in four of those regions and rose in the remaining five. The largest decrease (5.8 percent) was in the East North Central region, with weakness showing up in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin. The largest increases occurred in the Mountain (+7.9 percent) and West North Central (+5.4 percent) regions. Note that the survey for March was performed before the GM strike.

And, speaking of the GM strike, the Labor Department said today that the strike substantially contributed to the jump of 43,000 in the number of new claims for unemployment insurance benefits during the week ending March 23. The increase was the largest in two months, and the 429,000 new jobless claims total for the week was the highest since the week ending July 25, 1992.

To smooth out the effects of short-term fluctuations in the weekly numbers, the Labor Department calculates and publishes a four-week moving average of first-time unemployment claims. This is obtained by adding up the weekly values for the past four weeks and dividing by four. The latest value of the four-week moving average is 382,500. This is up from last week's 364,250 reading, and is 12.17 percent higher than a year ago. This is the highest reading in five months for the year-over-year change in the four-week moving average. The strike-related upsurge in the four-week moving average in the last two weeks cut short a short-term downtrend in the weekly readings. Thus, the six-month pattern of higher lows and higher highs remains intact. In other words, this indicator continues to trend upward.

Byline: Lafferty (MF Merlin)