Induced jitter in indicator area

To the right of the performance graphs, a character string has suddenly appeared (0.4?) showing the CPU utilization percentage. Every time this percentage changes to or from two to three digits (or to or from one to two digits in really low utilization cases), *everything* to the left of the string in the indicator area is shifted one character width one way or the other. Since I'm running BOINC/Seti@Home in the background, this jitter is constant and is **extremely** irritating, and there is no apparent way of turning off the display of this string (which, considering the availability of the CPU graph, is redundant anyway). Do I have any recourse other than backing up to a version that doesn't display the string?