Word: downturning
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...could work either for or against stability. On the one hand, the industrial and urban transformations wrought by Tito have had a cohesive influence. "People have been concentrating on a better standard of living instead of hating their neighbors," says a Western diplomat in Belgrade. But a severe economic downturn could aggravate the glaring inequities, and consequent animosities, between the developed northern republics like Slovenia and hinterlands like Kosovo. Lately the economy has been ailing. Unemployment, estimated at more than 13%, is growing. The current annual inflation rate is estimated at 35%, compared with 14% in 1978. Productivity has slowed...
From the moment economists first began warning six months ago that the Administration's inflation-fighting tactic of pushing up interest rates would bring on a recession, Jimmy Carter has been countering with calm assurances that any downturn would be "mild and brief." All winter long it seemed as if he might be right. Unemployment, a major indication of economic health, hovered steadily at an unsatisfactory but acceptable 6% of the labor force...
...last week it looked as if the President's promises of a tame little downturn for 1980 were wishful thinking. The Labor Department reported that during April the nation's jobless rate ballooned by a startling .8%, pushing unemployment to a full 7%, tossing some 825,000 workers into the street, and swelling the ranks of the nation's unemployed to 7.3 million. It was the largest rise in overall unemployment since January 1975 and the biggest climb in the jobless rate among males since 1949. Their unemployment rate leaped a full 1% during the month...
...jobless surge shows that the Administration's painful, but unavoidable, policy is at last beginning to take hold. Supporting evidence that the economic downturn could be a lot sharper than previously expected came from the Commerce Department. It reported that its index of leading economic indicators, which predicts future economic movements, plunged 2.6% in March. That was the largest one-month drop since the 1974-75 recession. Anti-Inflation Adviser Alfred Kahn, with his characteristic candor, said last week: "The country now faces the dilemma we have so long feared, the twin ugly evils of accelerating inflation...
...also face problems coming up with the balanced budget that Carter has promised for fiscal year 1981, which begins in October. Last week, for instance, the White House decided to ask Congress for a supplemental unemployment appropriation of $1.5 billion to cover increased outlays for workers idled by the downturn. Further such requests are quite possible in the months ahead...