STATE OF BUSINESS: Price-Wage Peak

While President Eisenhower was telling Congress last week that inflation is the nation’s top economic worry (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS), the Bureau of Labor Statistics gave some proof of the potential danger. The consumer price index, said BLS, rose in December for the sixth month in the past seven, advancing .2% to a record 118% of the 1947-49 average, a 3.3% increase for the year.

Real wages kept a step ahead as Americans piled up heavy overtime pay; the average factory production worker with a wife and two children took home an all-time peak of $76.54 a week, $1.30 more than the month before. Paychecks will grow even fatter. In February alone, hourly wages of some 500,000 U.S. workers in the transport and electrical industries will move up 1¢ to 3¢ under cost-of-living escalators. Warned BLS: “Rising costs and strong aggregate demand will very likely underwrite a continued climb in consumer and wholesale prices in 1957.”