July 7, 2000 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)
Price of fun falls
In recent years, fun
has become cheaper as the prices paid by consumers for toys and sporting
goods have dropped.
[Chart data—TXT]
Sporting goods prices have fallen for five years in a row, from 1995 to
1999. The latest drop was the largest of the five at 3.0 percent. Prices
for sporting goods were 4.5 percent lower in 1999 than five years earlier.
Toy prices have declined for three years in a row—by 1.6 percent in
1997, 6.1 percent in 1998, and 8.0 percent in 1999. Toy prices in 1999
were 15 percent below their level of three years earlier.
These data are produced by the BLS Consumer
Price Index program. More
information on consumer price changes can be found in "Core
consumer prices in 1999: low by historical standards,"
by Todd Wilson, Monthly Labor Review, April 2000. Annual percent
changes are December-to-December changes.
Of interest
Spotlight on Statistics: National Hispanic Heritage Month
In this Spotlight, we take a look at the Hispanic labor force—including labor force participation, employment and unemployment, educational attainment, geographic location, country of birth, earnings, consumer expenditures, time use, workplace injuries, and employment projections.
.
Read more »
|