As the long labor-market recovery emerges, more manufacturers and service-sector companies are expected to add to their payrolls in March 2010 than did so in March 2009, according to the Society for Human Resource Management’s (SHRM) Leading Indicators of National Employment (LINE) survey, released March 5, 2010.
“Though overall the labor market continues to struggle, LINE is revealing some positive trends,” said Jennifer Schramm, SHRM’s manager of workplace trends and forecasting. “This is the fifth month in a row in which hiring is up on an annual basis. HR professionals in manufacturing are reporting hiring rates at levels not seen since June 2008, and the percentage of companies hiring in the service sector is the highest since July 2007.”
The LINE Employment Report, based on a monthly survey of private-sector human resource professionals at more than 500 manufacturing and 500 service-sector companies, examines four key areas:
- employers’ hiring expectations
- new-hire compensation
- difficulty in recruiting top-level talent
- job vacancies
SHRM has tracked manufacturing-sector hiring trends since 2004 and service-sector trends since 2005 through its LINE indices, which are not seasonally adjusted.
