Index Points to Slowdown in Hiring

Looks like it's time to stoke up the fires for starting your own business!

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From the Wall Street Journal | Sept 7, 2010 | By Kathleen Madigan

An August measure of labor indicators suggests a slowing in hiring in coming months, according to a report released Tuesday by the Conference Board.

The board said its August employment trends index fell to 96.7, down from July’s revised figure of 97.4, first reported as 97.0. The August index is up 9.4% from a year ago.

“Employment growth has been slow lately, and the employment trends index suggests that it may slow even further this fall,” said Gad Levanon, associate director. “However, we still expect job growth rather than an outright decline in the next several months.”

Seven out of the eight components had a negative impact last month. The negative indicators were: the percentage of consumers who say jobs are “hard to get”, jobless claims, the percentage of firms with positions they’re not able to fill right now, involuntary part-time employment, job openings, industrial production and real business sales.

The report said it is the first time since March 2009 that seven components contributed negatively to the overall index. The ETI release follows Friday’s better-than-expected jobs report that showed private businesses added 67,000 jobs in August, about double expectations.

The Conference Board’s index is an aggregate of eight labor-market indicators, including jobless claims, job openings data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and industrial production figures from the Federal Reserve. It seeks to facilitate forecasts for employment, unemployment and wages by filtering out the noise and volatility of monthly labor market indicators and showing underlying trends more clearly.

The employment trends index is published the first business day following the government’s monthly jobs report.