Pushing Ahead

From various quarters last week came a barrage of statistics indicating that the recovery, though still dogged by worrisomely high inflation, is making steady progress. The key reports:

>> Consumer prices rose at an annual rate of 8.7% in October, a clear backsliding from the September pace of 6.2%. But the biggest jumps were in meat and dairy products, which are not likely to rise so sharply in coming months. Indeed, Department of Agriculture economists reckon that in 1976 food prices overall should go up by 5%, compared with a 9% climb expected this year.

>> Personal income climbed $12.7 billion in October, to an annual rate of just under $1.3 trillion. The increase was the smallest in three months. Even so, earnings of workers rose just about as much as prices between September and October, so the buying power of wage earners did not suffer.

>> Corporate profits jumped to an annual rate of $134.1 billion before taxes in the third quarter. That was up 32.5% from the first-quarter low of $101.2 billion, and the second-highest July-September rate on record, exceeded only by $ 157 billion in the third quarter of 1974.

>> Housing starts in October rose 15% from the month before, to an annual rate of 1,458,000. But permits for new construction did not go up that rapidly, so the rate of housing starts might fall back again.

>> Production of goods and services in the third quarter shot up even more rapidly than first reported. The Commerce Department calculates that real gross national product -output minus inflation -leaped at an annual rate of 13.2%, v. a preliminary estimate of 11.2%.

>> Interest rates continued to drop. First National City Bank of New York cut its prime rate on loans to blue-chip businesses a quarter-point, to 7%.

>> Automakers finally started to step up production to reflect higher sales. Ford announced that it would produce 6,500 more cars and 6,000 more trucks before the end of the year than it had planned. General Motors increased production of Pontiacs in Lakewood, Ga., recalling 2,200 workers -some of whom have been laid off since March 1974.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.