Statement About the Latest Economic Statistics

THE LATEST economic statistics, issued yesterday in Washington, confirm the steady expansion in the purchasing power of the Nation's workers--and Texans are sharing fully in this healthy prosperity trend.

This is greatly pleasing to me--it shows we definitely are on the right track with our economic policies.

In the year our new economic policy has been in effect, the real spendable weekly earnings of the average production worker have increased by more than 4 percent--even after price increases and Federal taxes have been accounted for.

For such a worker, that means his purchasing power has gained more than $200 in the past year--the equivalent of two extra weekly paychecks.

The plain fact is that American workers have scored greater increases in spendable income in the past year than at any time in the past 8 years.

The price statistics kept for Dallas, for example, as part of the nationwide cost of living calculation, indicate that Texans are sharing fully in this mounting purchasing power prosperity.

In Dallas, as in the Nation, the latest consumer price statistics show that the 1969 rate of inflation has been cut by more than half.

Inflation was running at a cruel 6.4 percent in Dallas in 1969, while the nationwide rate was 6.1 percent. The rise in prices has been reduced in the past year to 2.3 percent in Dallas and to 2.9 percent nationally.

These statistics remind us what it was like when this Administration first took office. It then was necessary for the average U.S. worker to get a raise of more than 6 percent just to stay even in purchasing power--any smaller increase meant his family actually fell behind on the inflation treadmill of the late 1960's.

We have made solid progress in the battle against inflation, but that battle is not yet won. We are determined to cut the rate of inflation even more than we have, in Texas and in the Nation.