Developments in Labor Market and Price Statistics in 1945 and 1946

Abstract

In connection with prices, it should be noted that on the whole, over the past year, the volume of our work has decreased slightly. This has affected especially the number of cities covered and the frequency with which we collect changes in consumer prices. In this connection, however, it is important to note that a number of State Labor Departments are interesting themselves in the possibility of developing consumer price indexes in their States for cities not covered by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Such figures are already available for a few States. We are cooperating with others and hope that, as a consequence, information on price changes in local areas will become more abundant. While our current work in the compilation of indexes of consumer price changes is less extensive than it has been for the last several years, there have been important developments in the price field. With funds which have been used to check the extent of agreement between prices reported by store mranagers to our field agents and prices that consumers say they paid for goods, we have secured valuable by-product inf ormation with reference to the distribution of urban family income and the distribution of family expenditures. The sample with which we have been working has been small, but drawn up in such a way as to be representative of urban families generally. Data for 1944 and 1945 are becoming available. We are about to publish indexes showing the influence of price differentials and climate on the cost of living among the 34 cities regularly covered in our consumers' price index. These indexes will replace the ones discontinued in 1943. Like the earlier series, the series will show that differences in expenditure and living habits among communities are far more a reflection of differences in prevailing income than of differences in prices or of strictly climatic factors. The commodities selected for inter-city comparison have been those with respect to which the greatest uniformity of specification exists. As part of this study in