SHRM: August LINE Report

Released the first Thursday of each month, the Society for Human Resource Management’s (SHRM) Leading Indicators of National Employment® (LINE®) Report, provides a snapshot of anticipated hiring for the month ahead and examines data from the previous month.

The LINE Report is based on a monthly survey of human resource professionals at more than 500 manufacturing and 500 private service-sector companies. Together, these two sectors make up more than 90 percent of America’s private-sector employment. The LINE Report examines four key areas:

• employers’ hiring expectations;
• new-hire compensation;
• difficulty in recruiting top-level talent; and
• job vacancies.

“The August LINE employment expectations index shows a worrying rise in layoffs, especially in the services sector where planned layoffs are more than double the rate from August 2010,”  said Jennifer Schramm, GPHR, SHRM’s manager of workplace trends and forecasting.

Almost half of manufacturers (49 percent) plan to hire in August, while 13.4 percent intend to cut jobs.

And, about one third (34.5 percent) of service-sector employers will hire in August, while 15.3 percent plan on cutting jobs, a year-over-year decrease of 19.1 points.

The August SHRM LINE Report shows that, despite expected hiring declines in August, HR professionals both increased compensation packages for new-hires and reported increased difficulty recruiting job candidates in July.

Check back in September for the latest hiring trends, compensation numbers, recruiting difficulty and vacancy information.