Unless you’ve been hiding out in a cave somewhere, you’ve probably heard that the economy is suffering. The rising occurrence of layoffs and factories closing mixed with falling job listings has created a horrendous mix that is hurting the budgets of Americans from sea to shining sea. Most of last year was marked by an ever decreasing employment market, and, according to The Conference Board’s Employment Trends Index (ETI) December’s reports showed no signs of an end in sight.
Data shows that the Index continued to drop during the last month of 2007, falling 1.6 percent from November’s 101.2 to 99.6. Although this may seem like a small decline, it is extremely significant when compared to data from the same time last year. Since December of 2007 The Conference Board has seen a decrease of almost 16 percent.
Worse than the fact that searching for jobs is getting much more difficult, is the fact that the employment situation is expected to continue to decay in this year.
“During 2008, total nonfarm employment declined by more than 2.5 million and the sharp declines in the Employment Trends Index suggest that in 2009 this number could grow by another 2 million,” said Gad Levanon in a recent press release Levanon is The Conference Board’s Senior Economist. He went on to say that “the continued deterioration in the Employment Trends Index signals that no turnaround in the labor market is to be expected in the near future.”
This continuing decline has been going on for the last 17 months and has made itself visible in all of the areas The Conference Board marks. According to Levanon, this has become especially visible during the last six months in the component that measures the number of temporary-help and part-time employees hired. Many businesses do this when they can not afford to pay the benefits and wages of full-time workers, but have to have the work done in order to have their office running at full capacity.
In order to properly monitor the employment situation The Conference Board looks at a total of eight labor market indicators in order to get a full picture. Each of these areas have been proven to be an accurate marker of the employment situation on its own. Combined these factors usually remove the inaccuracies, which makes it even easier to see the actual trends.
The eight areas that come together to create the index are: the percentage of people polled who say that finding a job is difficult (The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Survey), Claims for Unemployment Insurance (U.S. Department of Labor), the number of employees hired on a temporary basis (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics), the percentage of firms that are not able to fill positions at the time (National Federation of Independent Business), the number of people hired by temp agencies (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics), part-time workers hired for Economic Reasons (BLS), job listings (BLS), Industrial Production (Federal Reserve Board) and Real Manufacturing and Trade Sales (U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis).
The Conference Board will be releasing its most recent Employment Trends Index on February 9th. Economist expect that the trend of declines across the board will continue.
Tags: Job Listings
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