Mid-Atlantic Latest Research and Notices

Research and Reports

• NEW An Analysis of Southern energy expenditures and prices, 1984-2006. In the South, where heavy usage of electricity and gasoline causes consumers to spend a larger-than-average share of their budgets on energy-related goods and services, energy prices have increased sharply in recent years. On the whole, however, energy expenses actually made up a smaller share of Southern budgets in 2006 than they did in 1984.
• Industry dynamics in the Washington, DC, area: has a second job core emerged? This article examines industry employment dynamics in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area on a county-by-county basis over a 15-year span. The analysis focuses on the nine largest jurisdictions of the metropolitan area, highlighting changes in employment and wages from the first quarter of 1990 to the first quarter of 2005. Rapid job growth in high-wage private sector industries, especially professional and business services in areas outside the traditional employment core in the District of Columbia, has made the metropolitan area jobs base more diverse in terms of industry mix and geographic distribution.

Notices

• Discontinuance of mailing paper copies of the Mid-Atlantic Consumer Price Index (CPI) Announcement
  As of April 1, 2008, subscribers will no longer receive paper copies of the Mid-Atlantic CPI Announcement (Philadelphia Blue Card) in the mail. The Mid-Atlantic CPI Announcement will continue to be available through the Bureaus Web site.
  A free email subscription service is available for the CPI announcement. Shortly after the CPI announcement is posted online each month, subscribers to this service receive an email message containing a link to the announcement. The subscription form with a list of available regional office CPI summaries (blue cards) is located at http://www.bls.gov/bls/list.htm.
  The mailing of regional CPI announcements (summaries) and other regional publications is being discontinued as a result of unanticipated budget constraints faced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. See http://www.bls.gov/bls/budgetimpact.htm for details.