MUNCIE, Ind. -- Like a new jet plane being flight-tested, the red-hot U.S. economy seems to be "pushing the envelope" with each new statistical release of the young new year, says a Ball State University economic analyst.

The most recent reports show 30-year bond yields crashing below 5.75 percent, the U.S. dollar surging to 133 yen, the manufacturing work week rising to 42.3 hours, and the rate of job growth rising to 3 percent in the final quarter of 1997. Each of these achievements breaks a record of some duration, and news of them has come within the space of a few days, said Patrick Barkey, director of Ball State's Bureau of Business Research.

"We begin another new year in which the consensus of forecasters calls for slower growth and the economy stubbornly refuses to follow the script," he said. "By every indication, the U.S. economy will continue to roar at least through the first half of 1998, but some of the early warning signs of slower growth down the road are beginning to appear.

"The news on job growth is perhaps the most impressive of all these milestones, not only as a sign of strength in the economy, but as a guarantee that the consumer spending that is helping to fuel that growth will continue, at least in the short run."

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the national economy added another 370,000 jobs in December, bringing the total of net new jobs created in the final quarter of 1997 to an astounding 1,073,000. This is the highest three-month gain since May 1994.

Barkey said that perhaps the most heartening aspect of the recent job statistics is the broad-based nature of employment growth. Not only are the big engines of job creation, services and retail trade adding to their payrolls, but the recent strength in the long-suffering goods-producing sector of the economy is reminiscent of an earlier era.

"You have to go all the way back to 1987 to find a three-month period when the U.S. economy added 125,000 new manufacturing jobs, as we did in the final quarter of 1997," he said. The construction sector also continued its two-month growth spurt in December, adding 80,000 jobs since October. Employment in the building industries ended 1997 at a level that was 3.8 percent higher than the same month a year ago. With mortgage rates following long-term bond yields downward, there is every reason to expect things to stay healthy for builders for some time to come, Barkey said.

"The only rain on this parade comes, to no one's surprise, from the international sector," he said. "The same financial turmoil abroad that has brought billions into the U.S. and helped drive interest rates down so impressively has also wreaked havoc on the terms of trade between U.S. companies and their customers in foreign countries."

Domestic goods are now almost 20 percent more expensive in Japan and Germany, while the turmoil in Korea and Indonesia has virtually priced American goods out of these important markets altogether, Barkey said.

"On the flip side, the products of these economies are now extremely competitive on store shelves in this country," he said. "The upshot is that the U.S. can expect the trade balance, always a blow to national economic pride, to worsen in the coming months. Whether or not the worsening trade situation will be sufficient to slow down the hard-charging U.S. economy is something that remains to be seen."