Employment expectations are relatively upbeat for October with year-over-year increases anticipated in both manufacturing and service-sector hiring, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) said in its Leading Indicators of National Employment® (LINE) Report. The SHRM LINE Report, based on a survey of human resource professionals, predicts employment activity for the coming month, about 30 days before statistics on employment are available from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“The expectations for October are fairly positive,” said Jennifer Schramm, manager of workforce trends and forecasting at SHRM. “But the upbeat report is tempered by ongoing uncertainty from federal budget negotiations.”
The hiring rate will increase in the service sector in October compared with a year ago — the 15th consecutive month of increases. In the service sector, 43.4 percent of HR professionals said their company plans to hire workers, while 6.1 percent will cut jobs. In the manufacturing sector, 51.2 percent of HR professionals said their company plans to hire, and 9.3 percent said they will cut jobs.
SHRM also released this week its Jobs Outlook Report, which showed that 55 percent of respondents have some level of confidence in the U.S. job market for the fourth quarter of 2013.
The LINE Report provides a human resource snapshot of month-ahead hiring expectations and examines new-hire compensation, difficulty in recruiting top-level talent and job vacancies. Respondents include HR professionals from 500 private service-sector companies and 500 manufacturing companies, which together employ more than 90 percent of U.S. private-sector workers.
Recruiting difficulty increased in September, LINE showed. “The increase in recruiting difficulty in September points to more demand in the labor market at least for workers with in-demand skills,” Schramm said. “Difficulty in recruiting candidates for key jobs reached four-year highs in both sectors for the month of September.”
Job vacancies for both sectors hit four-year highs for the month of September. “Another indication that demand may be growing is a noticeable increase in job vacancies in both manufacturing and services in September,” she said.
Despite the improvement, the index data showed that most organizations still are keeping new-hire compensation rates flat.
Visit SHRM Online at www.shrm.org and follow us on Twitter @SHRMPress.
