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SHRM Leading Indicators of National Employment (LINE)

Before other indicators are released, the SHRM Leading Indicator of National Employment (LINE) Report provides information on:

Expected job change
The LINE Employment Expectations index is released approximately one month earlier than the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) Employment Situation Report covering the same period.

Recruiting difficulty
The LINE Report includes the only published measure of the difficulty firms have recruiting highly qualified candidates for their most critical positions. Such difficulties constrain the competitiveness of firms and the US economy.

New-hire compensation
The LINE Report also includes the only published measure of changes in wage rates offered to new hires which respond sooner than the wages of all workers to changing economic conditions.

Vacant Positions
In addition the LINE Report also tracks changes in the number of job vacancies in exempt and nonexempt positions in the manufacturing and service sectors.

Why can the LINE Report provide this information before anyone else?

The SHRM LINE Report uses data collected through a monthly survey of human resource executives at more than 500 manufacturing and 500 service-sector firms. They know if their firm’s workforce will be significantly expanded or cut back in the upcoming month because they are responsible for the job changes already underway. LINE expectation measures are therefore not economic forecasts, but are simply a report on “what’s already in the works.” This provides an early indication of the numbers the BLS will release approximately five weeks later.

The SHRM LINE Report uses the unique insight of HR professionals in a new and different way to produce a number of measures that have not been previously tracked, including employment expectations, new-hire compensation and recruiting difficulty.

The SHRM LINE Report is free and is released at 9:00 a.m. Eastern time on the third Friday after the conclusion of the week including the 12th of the month. View the latest report or sign up for your free monthly report.

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For questions on LINE data please contact SHRM Research at (703) 535-6301 or line@shrm.org.
Members of the media should contact SHRM Media Affairs at (703) 535-6356 or press@shrm.org.