I assume you're talking about "proc gplot" bubble plots...
Although there have been some recent improvements in "collision avoidance" to help keep labels from overlapping with gplot pointlabels, I still find times when I want to position the labels myself -- in those situations I use annotated text labels (using the position=1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|a|b|c|d|e|f, and/or adding slight offsets) instead of the automatic labels.
Message was edited by: Robert Allison @ SAS